Comparing Velvia against normal film

I've just sent off 3 rolls of 35mm Velvia 50 to Peak Imaging for development. I've never shot Velvia before and so I am looking forward to receiving my slides\prints.

In the meantime, can anyone point me in the direction of a web page that shows the differences between using a regular film and using Velvia...you know, a "Hear is a photo of Loch Lomond taken with Film X and here is the same scene shot with Velvia" type page???

Cheers

Ted

velvia is not normal film?

When I say 'normal' I mean the standard 200 ISO mainstream stuff that you can buy at the chemist or at Boots and which only costs a few quid to have developed.

What I like most about velvia is that while saturated, it's not over the top (though this depends on the lighting and exposure to a large extent). Most scenes seem to render really natural looking, but wickedly vibrant. Love the stuff.

Don't know of any comparison pages exactly. Maybe search "velvia provia comparison" or something like that.

The best way to find out is to try it for yourself. Scanned images of film are not necessarily representative of the colour you'll get.

I tested Velvia 50 against Kodachrome 64 once at a lake in Jasper National Park, Alberta (Canada). The Velvia image was markedly more saturated in colour. I shot with two different cameras, but with the same lens mounted on a tripod not shifted between the exposures.

Ted, I suppose you mean C41 versus E6, or print vs. slide, with particular emphasis on the new slowish/fine c41 films (the ISO 160 colour print films) vs. the velvias.

A couple of things come to mind....

(0) the way you rate and meter the films is quite different. If you get crummy first results from velvia, then next time you should bracket a stop or two while carefully recording how you metered etc. using zone system logic. As with everything worth knowing, practice makes perfect, and experienced velvians can help you along the way. Find something you like and ask the photographer how she/he did it.

(1) there are many ~ISO160 c41 films and many velvias too (old 50, new 50, 100F and 100); note that saturation, colour rendition, grain effects and contrast vary among them. In other words, they are quite different films in almost every way!

(2) very broadly speaking, the velvias are going to give you considerably more detail per capture area and less appearance of grain than print films... in other words, more and smoother detail. I'd say velvia has serious edge bite, if that lingo means something to you. But...

(3) ... but the flip side is that the exposure latitude of the velvias is substantially less than the c41 films. You have several more stops of latitude /range with the c41 films. This typically shows up in the shadow and highlight detail, though experienced velvians can tell you how to meter prudently and optimize the amount of shadow/highight detail you record on slide through various little tricks.

(4) output options are totally different. The irony is that while c41 films offer the quickest/easiest amateur output options in today's market (minilabs can do c41), slide actually offers a huge number of very interesting output options. If you search around you will find out more. Note that these methods are both traditional and hybrid.

(5) the velvias can work miracles with flat light.

(6) you might goggle cross-processing, it may interest you.

That's all that comes to mind for now. Enjoy velvia!

PhotoJim said:

The best way to find out is to try it for yourself. Scanned images of film are not necessarily representative of the colour you'll get.

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Yeah, absolutely - very good advice. A scan of film is not the same as the film (although if you're going to be printing from scans, those comparisons may be more relevant - although there are a lot of different adjustments during scanning, so your results may vary considerably).

I find I can't reproduce the richness of a velvia slide with a scan, no matter what I do. The digital medium is just too fundamentally different. I can get nice scans, but they just don't have the richness of the original pigments.

ted_smith said:

I've just sent off 3 rolls of 35mm Velvia 50 to Peak Imaging for development. I've never shot Velvia before and so I am looking forward to receiving my slides\prints.

In the meantime, can anyone point me in the direction of a web page that shows the differences between using a regular film and using Velvia...you know, a "Hear is a photo of Loch Lomond taken with Film X and here is the same scene shot with Velvia" type page???

Cheers

Ted

Click to expand...

I have been shooting Fuji Velvia since the early 1980s as my primary color transparency film and have always considered it to be a normal (very high quality) transparency film. One of its important (to me) attributes is the fact that when I move between formats (from 35mm to 120 rollfilm to large format sheet film) I always get predictable, consistent (and very high quality) results.

200 ISO is SO irregular. Ha ha ha ha ha

Ted, best to test films yourself. Velvia is a wonderful film. So is Velvia 100F.

Enjoy.

As has been said already, you can't appreciate Velvia by looking
at a scan. While your film is being processed, find a good pair of
scissors, buy a box of slide mounts, and get your hands on a slide
projector and a projection screen (a white wall will do for a
start). Then you'll know what Velvia is about.

with slide film, the film itself is your final product, and you put it into a slide projector to see it.

I'll just say a couple words in polite opposition to the idea that the slide is the final output I do understand this perspective, and lord knows that I love to look at slides with a loupe on a light-table. But...

-slide films scan very, very well. But you have to pay the bucks to get it done right; it is very difficult to get all that velvia has to offer using a flatbed or even a dedicated high-end film scanner. When it comes to velvia, drum scan or no scan is my honest assessment. Okay that is a bit extreme, you can get acceptable results with a lower end scan, but if you really want to have your socks knocked off, you simply have to drum. The good news is that you can admire your lovely slides with a high power loupe and sort through them very easily before deciding which ones to send to the drummer!

- slides can generate some great negatives. You can enlarge a slide considerably to b&w neg. film and then further enlarge that or contact print it. A medium format slide can generate a very credible LF neg. This is something that simply astounded me. On a whim I tried it with some 64T slide stuff that I had lying around. I kid you not: you can enlarge slide considerably without running into any grain at all, and the density range in the slide (Dmax to Dmin) makes for very quick and easy generation of a neg. The neg can be made on a nice pan film or paper, depends on what colour response you need. I have been playing with LF tmax for this kind of thing. Note that you can play some interesting colour-filtering games when you do this. Did you ever envy how the digital shooters can use photoshop's channel mixer to make b&w output? Envy no more, do it traditionally... with slide!

-slides can also be enlarged onto polaroid or fuji instant films, and the resulting emulsion can then be transferred or lifted. It's a good thing because getting a polaroid or fuji instant capture right in the field can be difficult.

-ilfochromes can still be done, and boy, they can be a jaw dropper, with saturation giving impact quite similar to a slide on a light-table. Unfortunately, I am not set up to do it and am very busy with other ventures, so my slide stuff typically winds up getting drummed and then light-jetted.

.. just a few reasons why the slide needn't be the final output. Though, again, I totally understand the perspective that a slide is itself a final product!

I think you want a comparison with a common or garden colour neg film. Can't give you that but if you can get hold of AP of about 3 weeks ago it ran a comparison between Velvia, Provia and Astia. All E6 films of course but even in non contrasty light conditions both Provia and Astia looked better to me despite the "punchiness" of Velvia in such conditions. They were seascapes scenes and the sea colour looked anything but natural in Velvia. I should confess to being an unsaturated colour fan myself.

Add to that the cost of an Ilfochrome print and it seems to me that slides are worthwhile only if you intend a slide show when slides at say 2-3 ft by 4-5 ft on a screen really come into their own. Indeed, cannot be replicated and therefore cannot be rivalled.

Ilfochrome prints might be considered better by some but in terms of "bang for buck" prints there are very much more expensive for at best a little better prints and even that conclusion is very much dependent on the eye of the beholder.

pentaxuser

I did my own side by side comarison of Velvia, Provia and Astia a couple years ago. The late Ted Harris described Velvia to me as "Disneyesque" colors. I would have to agree with Ted's findings. My subject matter was stuff around my folks lake house. I loaded up 3 bodies with different films and set about shooting. When the films came back one of the differences that jumped off the page (film??) was the color of a set of maroon steps we have at the lake. On Velvia, the steps were candy apple red as opposed to maroon. I prefer the more "natural" colors form Provia and Astia. I haven't shot Velvia since....however, the next time I make a trip to Disneyland, I'll be sure to load the Nikons with Velvia

I don't think Velvia was around in the early 1980s. My recollection is that it came out in 1988. There were certainly other Fujichrome films before that time. Velvia has a unique look and I don't think it suits every purpose. It looks particularly garish for people. With scanning and editing it should be possible to retain the fine grain and sharpness while changing the color. For regular 35mm shooting I find Ektachrome Elite Chrome 100 to have a nice neutral color balance as well as fine grain and good sharpness. If I want to jazz things up I will use the Extracolor (EBX) film but not for people. I recently got one 36 exp. roll of the new Velvia 50 and one roll of the same film in 120. I'd like to use it whle everything is in bloom but my allergies are acting up so I might have to wait a while.

I certainly wouldn't describe velvia as Disneyesque. I mean, I coudl just as easily say black and white is morbid looking. The other point is that there are (at least) 3 velvias, all with quite different colour rendition. Experienced velvians know how to get credible colours from any of these for particular subjects. For blues and greens, I think velvia is just astounding, and if there is a non-neutral cast that is objectionable, it is easily removed in print.

1990 for Velvia Introduction looks correct

dynachrome said:

I don't think Velvia was around in the early 1980s. My recollection is that it came out in 1988. There were certainly other Fujichrome films before that time. Velvia has a unique look and I don't think it suits every purpose. It looks particularly garish for people. With scanning and editing it should be possible to retain the fine grain and sharpness while changing the color. For regular 35mm shooting I find Ektachrome Elite Chrome 100 to have a nice neutral color balance as well as fine grain and good sharpness. If I want to jazz things up I will use the Extracolor (EBX) film but not for people. I recently got one 36 exp. roll of the new Velvia 50 and one roll of the same film in 120. I'd like to use it whle everything is in bloom but my allergies are acting up so I might have to wait a while.

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It seems that I was wrong in my earlier post in this thread. My 1980's LF and MF color transparencies are all Ektacromes. My 35mm was mostly Kodachome with some Ektachrome.

My LF, MF and 35mm Fuji Velvia transparencies started in the early 1990's.

Also see: http://www.olegnovikov.com/technical/velvia50vskodak100vs/velvia50vskodak100vs.shtml