Fuji's flagship product in terms of color accuracy and neutrality was far and away Astia 100F. I even did third generation color duplicates with it. Best duping film ever. But most people don't understand that there can be a significant difference between how well a specific kind of chrome film prints or is otherwise successfully reproduced, and something that just looks flashy on a lightbox or through a projector, so it never sold well. For one thing it was lower contrast, a real advantage in many situations. Provia products were mid-contrast, and Velvia high-contrast. I've used all of these successfully, but generally reserved Velvia for low contrast mist or rain instances where I deliberately wanted a real boost in contrast and saturation. But the best general-purpose compromise I found was the Kodak E lineup. E100G finally brought a sheet film with both excellent mid-range color characteristics as well as a stable PET (Estar) base, not neutral enough or long enough scale to be a good duping film, but an excellent general shooting film. The new E100 product seems even slightly better. If carefully used, it seems free of the kind of color casts or crossovers you often get in the shadows and highlights of Provia, but at the expense of limited scale. It's hard to make too many generalizations since the different generations of Provia were somewhat different in specific characteristics, just like the many generations and flavors of Ektachrome were. Velvia has always been an odd duck ideal for certain small ponds but not many others. I've pretty much moved along to Ektar color neg for nearly all my general shooting; but there are certain low-light and low contrast situations where this new E100 seems to be the cat's meow, even if I have to take the extra step to interneg it for sake of RA4 printing.
