How does Fuji Velvia accomplish such saturated colors?

retro film · Oct 26, 2014

So Fuji velvia film makes the colors look more saturated than they actually are. How is it able to accomplish this? are the CMY dyes just very saturated CMY colors compared to other films? It seems to me this is the only way to explain it. But at the same time, it seems that this isnt a satisfactory explanation, a pure yellow reproduced in the film cant be more saturated than the yellow dye, it could only be as saturated as the yellow dye. But then this just implies that the film is just reproducing the color saturation more accurately than other films, its not increasing saturation. Accurate saturation reproduction is not the same as exaggerating the color saturation, so I'm puzzled as to how it is able to create the appearance of increased saturation.

Dr Croubie · Oct 27, 2014

From what I know (and I'll happily let PE or anyone else correct me), colour films have 2 stages. The layers are sensitive to different wavelengths/colours of light, and then when they're developed they release a dye corresponding to that colour.

IE, in a very simplistic example, the blue light coming from your subject only hits one layer, red light hits another layer, green hits another layer.

When these are developed, the silver gets developed as in a regular B+W film. Then the colour-couplers kick in, so the silver in the layer that got exposed to red light releases a red (or cyan if it's C41) dye. The layer that got hit by blue light releases blue/yellow dye, and the green-sensitive layer releases green/magenta dye.

The colours that are absorbed and the colours that result can be totally different. Eg for Infrared Ektachrome EIR, green light hits a layer, when that was developed it released yellow dye. The red sensitive layer released magenta dye, the infrared sensitive layer released cyan dye. In that way, you got false-colour infrared.

So back to Velvia, in short, the wavelength it absorbs is different to the colour of dye it releases when it's developed. At least that's how I've always understood it, I'm happy to be corrected if that's wrong...

polyglot · Oct 27, 2014

It seems to contain negative couplers, i.e. a bit of exposure for example in the green channel will actually inhibit the sensitivity of the red and blue channels, etc. The net effect is that the dominant hue decreases the exposure effects of other hues and therefore all colours are slightly pushed away from grey and saturation is increased.

You can confirm this with a bit of densitometry: measure the R density of some black (unexposed) film and of some film that was exposed to deep dark blue sky, eg through a polarizer. I found that the blue sky was actually darker in the red channel than the completely blank/black film, and this effect seems to hold for all channels.

This frequently seems to trip people up when scanning because they set their black point from blank film, yet the film can go denser than that, so shadow details are lost to unnecessary colour-space truncation in the scan.

RPC · Oct 27, 2014

Slide films do not produce red, green or blue dyes. That would not work to form a good color image. Slide images are produced with cyan, magenta and yellow dyes like color negatives, but the negative images are reversed during processing to form a positive image.

retro film · Oct 27, 2014

polyglot said:
It seems to contain negative couplers, i.e. a bit of exposure for example in the green channel will actually inhibit the sensitivity of the red and blue channels, etc. The net effect is that the dominant hue decreases the exposure effects of other hues and therefore all colours are slightly pushed away from grey and saturation is increased.

You can confirm this with a bit of densitometry: measure the R density of some black (unexposed) film and of some film that was exposed to deep dark blue sky, eg through a polarizer. I found that the blue sky was actually darker in the red channel than the completely blank/black film, and this effect seems to hold for all channels.

This frequently seems to trip people up when scanning because they set their black point from blank film, yet the film can go denser than that, so shadow details are lost to unnecessary colour-space truncation in the scan.

This would explain how velvia has such saturated colors perfectly and I was thinking myself that it seems like it would have to somehow be able "subtract exposure" from non dominant layers that have recieved exposure in order to achieve high saturation of the dominant color. However I have never heard of negative couplers, can anyone else confirm this? Are there any other explanations that explain it?

flavio81 · Oct 27, 2014

retro film said:
So Fuji velvia film makes the colors look more saturated than they actually are. How is it able to accomplish this?

It is very easy. In late 1989, at Fujifilm's headquarters in Tokyo, Satan himself appeared to Fujifilm executives and showed them "the technology needed to erase Kodachrome from the map".

The rest, as they say, is history.

But seriously, also consider that Velvia is a high contrast film, and increasing the contrast also has a lot to do with increasing the perceived color saturation. Of course, i guess there is more to it than just a contrast increase.

DREW WILEY · Oct 27, 2014

I'm not the one to answer this technically. But every film has its idiosyncrasies. Velvia is actually quite accurate for certain kinds of hues under certain contrast conditions, and therefore not necessarily exaggerated. How people choose to use it, or any other film, is up to them.
Some photographers like things revved up, others like me have in the past selected this film for low contrast situations to arrive at a more
printable image which is closer to visual reality. In any event, certain corrections can be made during printing, if one understands the procedures.

Old-N-Feeble · Oct 27, 2014

You're all being far too silly. They just bump up the saturation slider on the top adjustment layer.

Rudeofus · Oct 27, 2014

There are a few things a film designer can do to influence saturation. Remember, dye formation starts with oxidized color developer molecules which either hit a dye coupler or drift around. It is quite possible that such a molecule drifts into a neighboring color layer and forms another dye, and as a result saturation would go down. You can reduce/eliminate this effect by putting layers with ODS (oxidized developer scavengers) between the color layers. You could go a step further: DIR couplers (development inhibiter releasing couplers) are special couplers which release a powerful restrainer when they react with oxidized color developer. These couplers, if placed correctly, would not only prevent oxidized color developer from hitting the neighboring color layer, it would even restrain development in that layer, leading to enhanced saturation.

Things become a bit more complicated when we look at E6 film. If we want a saturated red, we'd have to reduce color development in its own layer (cyan) and enhance color development in the other two color layers (yellow and magenta), exactly what polyglot observed and the opposite of what he described before. It's also the opposite of what I described above ...

In the first development step, where the above listed techniques would work in the right direction, you don't use development agents that could couple, so you can't do it there either, at least not the way I described it here.

Conclusion: paging PE, paging PE ....

Xmas · Oct 27, 2014

Naaa it gives pastel colours with my old single coated and un coated lenses.

DREW WILEY · Oct 27, 2014

Compared to what most of these idiots are doing in Fauxtoshop these days, Velvia is very very subdued. Think fluorescent spray paint.

removed account4 · Oct 27, 2014

Xmas said:
Naaa it gives pastel colours with my old single coated and un coated lenses.

+1

i have exposed velvia and it looks like an autochrome
other times pastel colors just like you xmax

flavio81 · Oct 27, 2014

DREW WILEY said:
Compared to what most of these idiots are doing in Fauxtoshop these days, Velvia is very very subdued. Think fluorescent spray paint.

LOL!!

Mustafa Umut Sarac · Oct 27, 2014

I dont know the history of velvia but I had a Kiev 88 and 80mm lens at 1992 and I bought a roll of velvia , set the asa to 50 and result best green foliage in my life. I dont know how people succeed to take pink rocks and purple skies but my results was extremelly correct and natural. I could walk in the slides.

Photo Engineer · Oct 27, 2014

Bump up contrast and you get more saturated colors. Add some edge effects and increase microcontrast and you get a sharper film with more saturated colors. No need for sulfur and brimstone in this, just simple product design.

Make a garbage dump look like a flower bed through the magic of chemistry (or as one person put it "chicanery".)! It seems that customers want brilliant color, not accurate color.

PE

cliveh · Oct 27, 2014

Its scanned into Photoshop, saturation is increased and then it is converted back to film. Fuji secret formula.

flavio81 · Oct 27, 2014

Photo Engineer said:
"Make a garbage dump look like a flower bed through the magic of chemistry"

That should have been Kodak Elitechrome Extra Color 100's slogan!!

(another film as saturated as Velvia. Or even more.)

Xmas · Oct 27, 2014

Photo Engineer said:
Bump up contrast and you get more saturated colors. Add some edge effects and increase microcontrast and you get a sharper film with more saturated colors. No need for sulfur and brimstone in this, just simple product design.

Make a garbage dump look like a flower bed through the magic of chemistry (or as one person put it "chicanery".)! It seems that customers want brilliant color, not accurate color.

PE

Ok but Kodak cancelled Kchrome25 and the signature that I next favored was velvia.
You don't necessarily want accurate

Rudeofus · Oct 27, 2014

Mustafa Umut Sarac said:
I dont know the history of velvia but I had a Kiev 88 and 80mm lens at 1992 and I bought a roll of velvia , set the asa to 50 and result best green foliage in my life. I dont know how people succeed to take pink rocks and purple skies but my results was extremelly correct and natural. I could walk in the slides.

You would walk in these Velvia landscapes, not noticing a thing, until you bump into the first person with caucasian skin: "is that blood in your face or why is it so red???"

Photo Engineer said:
It seems that customers want brilliant color, not accurate color.

If our eyes worked like a camera, we wouldn't need masking, dodging and burning, and we'd see deep blue shades and red/orange light bulbs. To be honest, I never understood Kodak's drive for "accurate" colors.

Dr Croubie · Oct 27, 2014

Rudeofus said:
You would walk in these Velvia landscapes, not noticing a thing, until you bump into the first person with caucasian skin: "is that blood in your face or why is it so red???"

Now I'm just thinking about Morgan Freeman's line from The Power Of One, "Why do you call yourselves white, when you are more pink than white?"

Prof_Pixel · Oct 27, 2014

Photo Engineer said:
It seems that customers want brilliant color, not accurate color.

We (since I was at Kodak at the time and worked on the issue) discovered in the mid-80s that people didn't really want accurate colors, they wanted 'accurate' colors as they remembered them (AKA memory colors) - In mid-August, the sky was really gray/blue and the grass was brown, but people remembered a blue sky and green grass and that what they wanted. The new Fuji films that came out at that time produced colors people though they remembered and Kodak had to bring out a new line of color films.

Old-N-Feeble · Oct 27, 2014

Photo Engineer said:
Bump up contrast and you get more saturated colors. Add some edge effects and increase microcontrast and you get a sharper film with more saturated colors. No need for sulfur and brimstone in this, just simple product design.

Make a garbage dump look like a flower bed through the magic of chemistry (or as one person put it "chicanery".)! It seems that customers want brilliant color, not accurate color.

PE

For the most part, PE, that's true. It was true of overly stark/contrasty B&W as it is with overly contrasty oversaturated color. Human beings, as a whole, like "too much". Maybe we "feel" more than we "see". Velvia provides precisely that oversaturated look so many like. Mostly, the only times people want accurate contrast and color is with portraits and even then they tend to go the opposite direction... lower-than-normal contrast and saturation. I guess we don't like reality that much... or perhaps our memories need a visual boost?

Why is Ektar 100 so popular?

Photo Engineer · Oct 27, 2014

Ektar 100 uses the methods in my post to get higher color saturation. They use higher contrast. Portra does not.

PE

Poisson Du Jour · Oct 27, 2014

Velvia provides precisely that oversaturated look so many like.

Wrong on both counts. Velvia is not "oversaturated". And a great many people do not deliberately seek out, nor like anything, oversaturated, but end up with garish, 'Disneychrome' tone because of incorrect application — their own mistakes and lack of experience. That's not the fault of the film! RVP is very contrasty with a strong red-green enhanced palette (RVP100F has a yellow-brown bias palette with an underwhelmingly pasty, insipid green). Use it in a rainforest and the colours will indeed be faithful to the scene. Which E6 film in history has not been contrasty (think E100 and E100VS — how were they different, if at all)? And Ektachrome? Which E6 film in history has not sought to provide a lively interpretation of nature/landscape/scenic photographs — not portraiture! Why has E6 long been the favoured method of printing for exhibition? Velvia's strong palette can be moderated, enhanced or placed somewhere in between, all with re-rating, single/multi exposure, filtration (e.g. polarisation, warming/cooling) or (importantly) shooting in the light it was designed for.

Sirius Glass · Oct 28, 2014

Photo Engineer said:
It seems that customers want brilliant color, not accurate color.

People want the colors that they remember which is not necessarily as they really were.

How does Fuji Velvia accomplish such saturated colors?

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