Some posters here are making remarks that clearly demonstrate they have no specific skill in targeting Velvia to its use, if they use it at all. It's obvious.
Velvia was designed for exposure in diffuse illumination. Like any other E6 film (including Kodak's), it looks bloody awful when shot in the high noon of day with blue skies so hyper-infused that editors will trash a roll without further consideration the moment a blue sky turns up — it shows a lack of care in understanding how to expose Velvia correctly (I have also seen tripe shot on Provia with an 81B, polariser, UV and Skylight filter all at once). Cut to its design intent and Velvia remains the gold standard for all exhibition and gallery work in the analogue form, devoid of "outrageouos colour", and it has earned that over many years in skilled hands ,basing exposure based on science, not populist opinion.
Provia is not a saturated E6 film, never was and never will be by design; it is the polar opposite of Velvia and a very good all-rounder, especially with skin tones. It doesn't even share a common palette with Velvia, as many people assume. Provia can be moderated in terms of the colour tone by under- or judicious overexposure; it is not rocket science and such a technique is common too with Velvia, additional to measured use of a polariser, modulating tone and colour response to suit the photographer's vision of the print on the wall. Nothing mentally challenging about all this: we also did the same stuff with Kodachrome 25, 64 and 200, also avoiding shooting that in bright sunlight.
Velvia was designed for exposure in diffuse illumination. Like any other E6 film (including Kodak's), it looks bloody awful when shot in the high noon of day with blue skies so hyper-infused that editors will trash a roll without further consideration the moment a blue sky turns up — it shows a lack of care in understanding how to expose Velvia correctly (I have also seen tripe shot on Provia with an 81B, polariser, UV and Skylight filter all at once). Cut to its design intent and Velvia remains the gold standard for all exhibition and gallery work in the analogue form, devoid of "outrageouos colour", and it has earned that over many years in skilled hands ,basing exposure based on science, not populist opinion.
Provia is not a saturated E6 film, never was and never will be by design; it is the polar opposite of Velvia and a very good all-rounder, especially with skin tones. It doesn't even share a common palette with Velvia, as many people assume. Provia can be moderated in terms of the colour tone by under- or judicious overexposure; it is not rocket science and such a technique is common too with Velvia, additional to measured use of a polariser, modulating tone and colour response to suit the photographer's vision of the print on the wall. Nothing mentally challenging about all this: we also did the same stuff with Kodachrome 25, 64 and 200, also avoiding shooting that in bright sunlight.
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