I got a pro pack of Velvia in 120 from Roberts Camera this week. It’s the first 120 I’ve seen come in stock in a while. Expires 04/2027, which is earlier than I expected. I’d say it’s some weird distributor slowness, but my understanding is that Roberts is the distributor for film in the US.
Two rolls of RVP50 in 35mm touched down on Friday with expiry of 01/2027.
The majority of their films currently available in Australia — online and in-store, have 04/2027 — certainly both boxes of RVP50 in 120 format received a week back have that date.
Except for the occasional dabble in B&W (rare today), I was brought up on slides, from Ektachrome 64 and 100 in 1977 when I first started with one of my late aunties' Minolta SRT101b cameras, to "guzzling" Kodachrome through the 1980s and finally Fuji's offerings from their first release in the dawning of the 90s. I printed from slides to
Ilfochrome Classic when I was a printer in South Australia. And slides were the only media we printed from, never negatives. Slides are also the
finished photograph when exposed accurately — nothing comes close to a glowing Velvia slide on the lightbox (in any format!), and even better still when it is printed up for exhibition; remembering too, they do not take kindly to clumsy manipulation, either darkroom or computer-based, so the importance of accurate exposure taking into account the appearance of the end product (
prints, in my case) is critical. I learned this from viewing my aunties' UK
Trooping the Colour slides, in Kodachrome and Ektachrome from the 1960s and 1970s, when their amazing globetrotting on PanAm (Australia to London then was a days long one-way hike!) was the done thing for those with money and plenty of time! Those Kodachrome slides from
Trooping the Colour still exist, six decades-plus later.
Before Ilfochrome printing, I assisted the pictorial editor of two bicycle touring (which I was heavily involved in back then) and photography magazines
(Australian Photography) here in Australia in the late 1980s to early 1990s — negatives were vanishingly rare to be accepted; most were sent back with rejection slips because it took much more time to 'interpret' the view than with the straightforward presentation of slides for subject, colour, composition, tone and overall suitability for printing. Those halcyon days made people a lot of money. Well written submissions with slides, taken with the likes of the Nikon F3, FE2, FM, F90X and Canon T-series cameras, were laid out and scrutinised on the lightbox and selected for cover, verso, spreads and middles. These submissions paid very well too, in the range of $700 to $1400 (for front page) and $850 for spreads. So very many people bought lenses, film and even a new (or second-hand) camera with their windfall — additional to being thrust into the spotlight as photographers with exceptional visual skills.
