First Attempts with Velvia

Hi,

I shot my first roll of Velvia over the last month or so. When I loaded, I was with a few old hands, who told me to under expose by around half a stop. I decided to trust the meter in the camera (maybe this was my mistake?) and compensate by 1/3rd of a stop (to play it safe) and set the camera manually. Both shots were also done with a Cokin ND8 graduate.

This is what I came up with:

Shot one - 1.6 secs @ F29

Shot Two - 2 secs @ F29


I would like some advice. Based on the water, would you still call these under exposed? Would have I been better spot metering on the water and then compensating based on that? Also, the scan and the negs seem to have a cast on the water. Would exposure compensation help to fix this? Or is this a separate issue?

Any advice or comments are more then welcome!

Cheers

Exposure looks pretty much spot-on to me. Exposure compensation won't really change that colour much. I don't see much of a colour cast there. Well done.

Actually, looking again, I see what you mean about the colour, particularly near the top. I still don't think it is an exposure problem though.

I guess your companions were advising you to underexpose in order to compensate for the overall dark tones in the image. Assuming you were using an averaging-type meter, then I would agree with this advice. I would mention, though, that Velvia is generally happier exposed at ISO 40 than the rated ISO 50.

It's hard to tell from a scan, but in both your first shot the bright patch of water at the bottom looks correctly exposed, whereas in the second one the highlights are losing detail. However, the shadow areas look better in the second shot - so it's a matter of choosing the best compromise. This is a classic example of a high contrast scene where it's simply not possible to capture full detail in both the highlights and shadows simultaneously. Overall, I would say the second image looks better exposed.

For a first attempt, though, you've done very well. Both images look excellent, and composition is spot on.

Generally I would advise spot metering with slide film where possible. With practice, you will learn to place tones where you want them with good precision, which takes the guesswork out of exposure. Bear in mind that +2.3 stops will give the brightest possible highlight value on Velvia, and about -2.5 stops will give the darkest useful shadow tone.

Regarding the colour cast, you might be staring to see the beginning of 'reciprocity failure'. This occurs with long exposures, and leads to underexposure and colour shifts, especially for exposures longer than 4 seconds. Given that you're working around 2 seconds here, it might not be surprising that you're seeing a slight shift to magenta.

Ed.

Thanks for the comments. As a whole, I am relatively happy with the results of the whole roll. I was hoping for a bit more at the waterfall, but its all a learning curve I suppose. Re, the colour cast, my thinking was that if I was to burn out the whites just a bit more, then there would be nothing to cast, but then there goes the detail as well

I am quite happy with this one from the same roll:


Just a quick knee down snap shot on the side walk near my work.

Cheers

Both exposures look fine, with the second one looking slightly better for shadows, but maybe a tiny bit of highlights lost at the bottom. Did you look at these on a light table as well? Scans can always present some issues, depending on scanners, with transparencies. Overall, you have a high contrast scene and Velvia 50 is also a very contrasty film. Judging from the lighting and rocks, even spot metering the water at zone VII-VIII, would have probably gotten you similar results so I would say that the in-camera meter did a pretty job there.

It's also quite possible the color cast is from the Cokin filter. They often impart a cast.

I find Velvia is also sensitive to how long you've had them in exposed. Were the waterfall shots exposed earlier, before you took the flower shot? For a slow film I find Velvia fogs on me, or perhaps my usual "Velvia body" needs new light seals, I'm not quite sure but my last few rolls of it were not great which was disappointing.

Hi,

Its actually Velvia 100, not that it makes much of a difference.

I have checked these via projection and the scans look pretty good.

Also, the flower was taken a week or two after the water fall

Thanks

I can't see anything wrong with your shots Ashley they look very sharp,punchy, and well exposed to me.

They look great to me also!

Jeff