How Would You Compare Velvia 50 to Ektachrome 100 ?

DREW WILEY · Aug 10, 2023

"Most people" don't shoot film at all, or even think it still exists. Most don't even know the difference between a camera and a phone anymore. Is that a step forward, or backwards? So I guess that makes ALL of us, participating here, even via a film presence alone, somehow snobs? Is quality deserving of a voice, or merely quantity? That's what I was implying. It's just a tiny step one direction or another till there is no purpose for chrome film at all, unless it's for a qualitative rather than quantitative reason. And I really don't give a damn how many billions of people are served at McDonald's. Doesn't mean I have to eat there too.

faberryman · Aug 10, 2023

DREW WILEY said:
"Most people" don't shoot film at all, or even think it still exists. Most don't even know the difference between a camera and a phone anymore. Is that a step forward, or backwards? So I guess that makes ALL of us, participating here, even via a film presence alone, somehow snobs? Is quality deserving of a voice, or merely quantity? That's what I was implying. It's just a tiny step one direction or another till there is no purpose for chrome film at all, unless it's for a qualitative rather than quantitative reason. And I really don't give a damn how many billions of people are served at McDonald's. Doesn't mean I have to eat there too.

Sheesh. So many hot buttons, so little time.

Edgy01 · Aug 11, 2023

Heads up. BH PhotoVodeo has 120 Velvia in stock again!

Alan Edward Klein · Aug 12, 2023

Edgy01 said:
Heads up. BH PhotoVodeo has 120 Velvia in stock again!

Just looked. Not in stock. Only in 35mm

AnselMortensen · Aug 12, 2023

Back on topic,
Velvia 50 as a Lamborghini...bright, flashy, "look at me!" colors.
Ektachrome 100 as a Toyota Camry.
Solid, reliable, will get you there safely without a lot of hullabaloo.

Alan Edward Klein · Aug 12, 2023

AnselMortensen said:
Back on topic,
Velvia 50 as a Lamborghini...bright, flashy, "look at me!" colors.
Ektachrome 100 as a Toyota Camry.
Solid, reliable, will get you there safely without a lot of hullabaloo.

I can't afford a Lamborghini but can afford Velvia.

DREW WILEY · Aug 13, 2023

Well, I drive a dirty old pickup. I once deliberately drove down a winding one-lane country road as slow as possible just to drive crazy with frustration a fellow with his girlfriend in a bright yellow Lamborghini. But as soon as there was a straight section of only 50 yards or so, VROOOOM, past me in three seconds flat, it seemed.

faberryman · Aug 14, 2023

DREW WILEY said:
Well, I drive a dirty old pickup. I once deliberately drove down a winding one-lane country road as slow as possible just to drive crazy with frustration a fellow with his girlfriend in a bright yellow Lamborghini.

What a guy.

JParker · Aug 17, 2023

Alan Edward Klein said:
I've always slipped the 120 film leader into the groove into the take-up spool in my Mamiya RB67. Unfortunately, I currently have film in my holders so I can't check. Are there hooks there too? Is there a hole in the Velvia 50 film for it?

Sorry for the late reply. Yes, there is a hook in the Fuji spools. And a hole in the backing film leader that fits to it. A reliable film transport is guaranteed by that. With cheap 120 film I had problems in that regard several times, so I really appreciate the perfect Fuji solution.

JParker · Aug 17, 2023

DREW WILEY said:
Parker - Why would any fashion photographer choose Velvia to begin with? It has poor neutrality and certainly doesn't flatter many complexions.

I have not said that Velvia is the tool to begin with. It can be an option. I have some experience in the fashion industry and fashion photography. You are using Velvia for a certain look, to emphasize colours of the fashion. Skin tones are not a problem when using models with either a pale skin, or with sun tanned skin.

DREW WILEY said:
That's the kind of studio application Astia was designed for, the opposite end of the selection scale from Velvia. It was far more neutral and more evenly hue balanced - the best ever, in fact. I even used it for making precision internegs from chromes; Velvia and even Portra would be worthless for that.

I completely agree on the qualities of Astia 100F. Well, horses for courses. Astia is the perfect allrounder for fashion, and Velvia can be the right choice for certain applications.

DREW WILEY said:
You just made an argument why polarizers increase contrast rather than decrease them.

No. With polarizers in landscape photography you can intensify and darken the blue of the sky in relation to the ground, which results in overall less contrast (in f-stops) of the scene.

DREW WILEY said:
Find me a name brand ND grad set, and I'll tell you every example that particular outdoor photo guru himself made that way looks ridiculous.

O.k., you don't like the use of gradual filters. No problem. Millions of photographers do like them and use them succesfully. And saying that their work looks ridiculous.......well, just your opinion.

DREW WILEY said:
Do you have any experience with earlier E-6 films like generation I or 2 Provia (I think it's now 4th generation), or old Ektachrome 64? - those pulled way better, but if too much, more than half a stop, risked highlight crossover. The newer fine-grained "F" versions lost most of that ability (though gained certain other advantages).

Yes, I have. And from my own experiences and the experience of photographer friends of mine, I just can say that Provia 100F delivers a very good performance being pulled (I prefer EI 64/19° with adjusted processing).

JParker · Aug 17, 2023

DF said:
and one thing else: Velvia needs a tripod - Ektachrome more times not....

I shoot Velvia 50 mostly without needing a tripod. If you need more speed and Velvia colors, there is Velvia 100.
And Ektachrome E100 is not a real ISO 100 film, but ISO 80. Not only my experience, but that of the majority of E100 users. The photo groups are full of reports about it.

JParker · Aug 17, 2023

koraks said:
Fuji is a chemical company at its core. They're volume-driven; niche products don't fit in their portfolio.

But nevertheless they are offering many niche products. In most of their segments.
For example their whole digital camera segement is just a niche, responsible for less than 5% of their turnover. Whereas their silver-halide segemt with films, papers, chemistry and cameras is responsible for 10%.

faberryman · Aug 17, 2023

JParker said:
For example their whole digital camera segement is just a niche, responsible for less than 5% of their turnover. Whereas their silver-halide segemt with films, papers, chemistry and cameras is responsible for 10%.

I think you need to be more granular in your financial analysis.

koraks · Aug 17, 2023

JParker said:
But nevertheless they are offering many niche products

There's niche and there's niche. Silver halide paper is arguably a niche, but a rather sizeable one. We're talking about many millions of square meters annually. E6 film is a tiny, tiny fraction of this.

Also keep in mind that their photo finishing business isn't just silver halide. It includes inkjet and inks as well. These are pretty big businesses.

For firms like Fuji, what makes a product attractive is ROI combined with a certain minimum scale. Given Fuji's nature of a chemical firm, they think in terms of inherently large volumes. This really permeates their business and their DNA of a chemical company literally starts at the front door.

Alan Edward Klein · Aug 17, 2023

JParker said:
Sorry for the late reply. Yes, there is a hook in the Fuji spools. And a hole in the backing film leader that fits to it. A reliable film transport is guaranteed by that. With cheap 120 film I had problems in that regard several times, so I really appreciate the perfect Fuji solution.

I'll have to check into that. Sounds like I've been loading film harder than need be. Thanks.

miha · Aug 17, 2023

JParker said:
And Ektachrome E100 is not a real ISO 100 film, but ISO 80.

This is heresy.

DREW WILEY · Aug 17, 2023

Here we go again. I have very carefully tested Ekta 100, along with its predecessors, and it is spot on box speed 100.
No question about that whatsoever. Kodak knows what it is doing. I couldn't care less about a bunch of web rumors.

I still hold to ALL the opinions I have expressed. Of course, studios can flex things to their own needs. And outdoors shooters can go out there and do a hatchet job of natural lighting with grads and polarizers if they want, but it's not to my taste. I have yet to see it done convincingly when it comes to grads. More a postcardy faux effect. And no, millions are not using them. That's a blatant exaggeration if there ever was one.

miha · Aug 17, 2023

DREW WILEY said:
Here we go again. I have very carefully tested Ekta 100, along with its predecessors, and it is spot on box speed 100.
No question about that whatsoever. Kodak knows what it is doing. I couldn't care less about a bunch of web rumors.

+1

This ISO 80 thing was widely spread on various photo forums by certain posters only soon after the re-release of the film. It has no foudation whatsoever.

faberryman · Aug 17, 2023

miha said:
This ISO 80 thing was widely spread on various photo forums by certain posters only soon after the re-release of the film. It has no foudation whatsoever.

I have not seen any testing one way or the other.

miha · Aug 17, 2023

faberryman said:
I have not seen any testing one way or the other.

Best to try it by yourself

Alan Edward Klein · Aug 17, 2023

With shutter speeds often off 1/3 of a stop with LF lenses, ASA 80 might be fine for their camera. Your shutter can be off as well as your meter. So many variables. In the old days, pros often underexposed chromes a bit to avoid clipping and to saturate colors. Don't know what happens with today's Ektachrome as far as saturation from using a higher ASA. Russ, any tests you did?

DREW WILEY · Aug 17, 2023

For analytic purposes, everything has to be correctly calibrated and matching to begin with. A manufacturer can't put forty different speed options on a box of color film depending on which kind of shoot from the hip recklessness is out there. For that kind of thing there are wide latitude amateur snapshot films like Kodacolor Gold.

These aren't the old days. And if a slight underexposing of E6 chromes was involved, that did indeed at times improved a slide show, but certainly didn't make those images more printable or magazine reproducible, if that was what was in mind instead. A lot of that had to do with the characteristics of Ektachrome 64, which had a little more latitude than the remaining chrome films of today, and quite a bit more than Velvia. Kodachrome was still around back then too. But what one can or cannot get away with also depends on the actual scene lighting ratio itself.

faberryman · Aug 17, 2023

ISO film speed for color transparency film is determined pursuant to the standards set forth in ISO 2240:2003. If you are interested in double-checking Kodak's work, you can obtain a copy for $77 here:

ISO 2240:2003 - Photography - Colour reversal camera films - Determination of ISO speed

iso22402003-Photography - Colour reversal camera films - Determination of ISO speed-ISO 2240:2003 specifies the method for determining the ISO speed of colour r

webstore.ansi.org

NortheastPhotographic · Aug 17, 2023

JParker said:
I shoot Velvia 50 mostly without needing a tripod. If you need more speed and Velvia colors, there is Velvia 100.
And Ektachrome E100 is not a real ISO 100 film, but ISO 80. Not only my experience, but that of the majority of E100 users. The photo groups are full of reports about it.

I think it was from a few people who like to shoot portraits, so rating Ektachrome 100 at 80 would be boosting your exposure by 1/3rd stop...an effective way to bring skin tones out of Zone V to a more airy look. Could be what brought them to that conclusion...however wrong it was.

Also E6 is very susceptible to push/pull so if you're at the 6m time or the 6:30 time, that's going to make a difference too.

DREW WILEY · Aug 17, 2023

Nobody ever placed Caucasian skintone on Zone V, but were taught a stop above, the old "palm of your hand" reading.
Besides, color pros almost never thought in Zone System terms anyway. Color film is speed rated differently, from the center point out, rather than according to various models of shadow speed point and overall characteristic curve like black and white films. It's a matter of how colors saturate in relation to the 18% reflectance metering midpoint, and not about a continuous gray scale all the way from black to white.

And back in ole hot light days, studios often employed tungsten-balanced chrome films, which could be squeezed of their juice a little more than daylight balanced equivalents. Studios could also easily use fill lighting to tame the overall contrast enough to get away with pull processing if they somehow found that favorable to their own style and workflow.

How Would You Compare Velvia 50 to Ektachrome 100 ?

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