Exposing velvia 50

[Jarvman]

I got my first ever roll of velvia back today taken with a Fuji G617. First ever roll of slide film for that matter. While one of the shots was spot on the others were overexposed, but only slightly according to the lab apparently. The advice I got given by my tutor was to rate it ISO 25 on cloudy days and ISO 40 on a bright days. Is this sound advice? It seems a bit of a rough guide, how do you differentiate inbetween. Bearing in mind I also compensated by a stop for the ND center filter. Any tips for getting right results would be helpful.

 

[Graham.b]

When i use 50 slide or any slide, i use -1 stop all the time. I get good results from this set up. Others will have their own ways.

Graham

 

[Soeren]

I take it you rated the first film @ ISO 50? And most of your shots where overexposed? If so rating it lower e.g. ISO 40 or even 25 would only increase the fault. What about your metering technique? are you metering for the highlights? Thats how you shoot slides. Meter the highlights and give two stops more exposure than the meter recommends for starters.
Kind regards

 

[Jarvman]

The ones which were overexposed were rated at ISO 25. The one which turned out ok I believe was ISO 40. That gives me my simple answer really, don't depart that drastically from the ISO stated even if told to yes!? the overexposed ones probably would've been fine at ISO 40-50. I was just taking an ambient meter reading and adding a stop for the filter like it says in the instructions with it. Time to start using a spot meter?

 

[Uhner]

Time to start using a spot meter?

I prefer working with an incident meter when shooting slides.

 

[keithwms]

Rating recommendations should be accompanied with detailed metering instructions, IMHO.

Generally I'd say: rate it at box speed, as the gods intended, and meter according to where you want your shadow and highlight values to fall.

There are no simple prescriptions like rating high or low that will give you as consistently good a result as carefully considering SBR and how you meter.

I spot meter when shooting slides. I also have adopted a practice of using a little digital SLR as a fancy previewing exposure/colour temp meter; I find that it's sensivity quite closely matches that of velvia 100 so I use it as a preview.

 

[RH Designs]

I routinely exposed the original Velvia 50 at ISO40. I haven't tried the "new" Velvia 50 but have some waiting - I'll start at ISO40 and see what happens. I would certainly expect ISO25 to result in overexposure. If in doubt, bracket, but that could get pricey on a 6x17 format ...! A spot meter would certainly help as it would give you some idea of subject contrast and allow you to expose the important areas the way you want them.

 

[Jarvman]

Yeah, I had my doubts when he said. It seemed a sloppy way of doing it. Would you imagine if I get the exposure correct on a digital SLR it'd relate closely to what is on film? I'll continue rating it at 40 then. Haha yes, perhaps 4 shots a film wasn't the ideal entry into slide! Perhaps time to shoot some 35mm before ploughing into roll upon roll of 120.

 

[keithwms]

Would you imagine if I get the exposure correct on a digital SLR it'd relate closely to what is on film?

Yes, and my advice is to set your camera in its most 'vivid' mode and the use the histogram to judge whether your exposure is correct. DSLRs make lovely meters

I see no reason to routinely rate velvia 50 at 40. How would you translate your dslr metering results to ISO 40 film anyway, that's a math headache Stick to 50 for now until you see compelling reasons not to do so. Do not overexpose: if anything I'd go in the opposite direction and rate it at 65.... but obviously this depends on your own [hopefully consistent] metering practices and what you're after. It's pointless for us to debate how to rate the film if we all have different metering practices and moreover different objectives with regards to colour.

If you are a total newbie to slide then I would say bracket with one frame rated at 50 and the next at 65. On a lightbox you will prefer the latter, whereas for scanning you will probably prefer the former. Indeed, how you expose should be determined in part by how your final output will be generated.

Note that if you really need more shadow detail, you're probably better off preflashing than overexposing your slide. Overexposing is very seldom a good thing for slide. It's the opposite of print film: underexposing print film is also usually a bad idea because you'll lose shadow detail. If you overexpose slide film and you lose highlight detail, and you lose it very quickly.

My quick 'n dirty approach is to decide what in the scene needs to be rendered white and let everything else fall where it may. This quite often means simple average metering with a small bias toward protecting highlights.

 

[timparkin]

Having had a long discussion with a few UK professional photographers, the consensus was that the old velvia 50 was best rated at 40 but the new Velvia is definitely a 50. The new Velvia is also less susceptible to reciprocity (probably about 1/3 less than the data sheet says) and it isn't affected as much in colour with reciprocity. Also, Velvia seems to have more dynamic range than people give it credit for if you have a good scanner (forget flatbeds) you should get -2.5 stops out of it. The hilight sensitivity is also colour sensitive. Blues will blow out at +1 2/3 whereas orangs and yellows will go clear at +2 2/3 and retain texture to +2 to +2 1/3.. I made a zone meter for Velvia (which might be slightly optimistic - it's probably spot on for provia) at Dead Link Removed ... bear in mind that where I've put spots in the diagram is where there is a slight texture retained (don't expect to see what it is though!)