Taken the leap from digital to 4x5 film.

[M J Langdon]

Hi everyone, my name is Mike, I am from Devon south England. I am a Landscape and Seascape digital photographer that has just taken the plunge into large format film photography as I wanted the movements of the field camera and the slower way of working, plus I love old cameras :)
I have bought some Velvia 100f and Kodak Ektar 100 films, I haven't taken any images yet because I'm still bidding on a changing tent to load the film holders, "Fingers crossed I win it".
Does anyone know how many stops + and - of zone V these films can go? I would test the films, but at £5 per exposure (including development) I can't really afford to be wasting film on testing the dynamic range.

Cheers, sorry if I'm rambling on :)

[Deval]

Welcome Devon,
I'm really excited for you...I think it only gets better.

Classically slide film will pull about 5 stops. Don't put any important highlight past VIII, and and any important shadow below III IMO.
Ektar is a beast of a film...I'm guessing 11-13 stops(however most printable paper cannot contain that wide of a range, so it depends really on what your final output is). You could just meter the shadows place them in 3, and let the rest fly. In a digital darkroom, definitely be familiar with color correction with Ektar, as it looks unpleasant with a straight scan...when properly scanned, it is stunning. With minor saturation bumps, it can come close to Velvia.
A lot of photographers use this for color shots that you want to include the sun in the photo(sunrise and set). be prepared to use a split ND filter for velvia.

If you like longer exposures with seascapes and are using a 6-10 stop ND, be prepared for a blue cast with both. You can include a gretag macbeth card in one of the double exposures and clone it out if needed. Good luck and welcome

If you home develop Ektar, you could really bring the cost down per sheet. Look up Alex Burke's website. He really uses Ektar well to get slide-like colors..I think he has a few articles on how he scans it as well.

[vinny]

welcome
plenty of info on those films online but a better way would be to:
borrow a 35mm camera.
buy a roll or 2 of those films.
bracket your shots while taking notes with your spot meter.
take a look at the processed film.

[M J Langdon]

Welcome Devon,
I'm really excited for you...I think it only gets better.

Classically slide film will pull about 5 stops. Don't put any important highlight past VIII, and and any important shadow below III IMO.
Ektar is a beast of a film...I'm guessing 11-13 stops(however most printable paper cannot contain that wide of a range, so it depends really on what your final output is). You could just meter the shadows place them in 3, and let the rest fly. In a digital darkroom, definitely be familiar with color correction with Ektar, as it looks unpleasant with a straight scan...when properly scanned, it is stunning. With minor saturation bumps, it can come close to Velvia.
A lot of photographers use this for color shots that you want to include the sun in the photo(sunrise and set). be prepared to use a split ND filter for velvia.

If you like longer exposures with seascapes and are using a 6-10 stop ND, be prepared for a blue cast with both. You can include a gretag macbeth card in one of the double exposures and clone it out if needed. Good luck and welcome

If you home develop Ektar, you could really bring the cost down per sheet. Look up Alex Burke's website. He really uses Ektar well to get slide-like colors..I think he has a few articles on how he scans it as well.
Thank you for given such a detailed response. I use Lee Filters already for my digital photography, so that won't be a problem with the velvia.
I develop my black and white 35mm and 120mm films at home, but have read that colour can be very sensitive to temperature and that the chemicals are a bit dodgy to use, What are your views on this?
I'm surprised at the 11-13 stop dynamic range of the Ektar. My digital camera has just over 13 stops which I bring into printable range in Lightroom, Can film be recovered in Lightroom the same as digital Raw files?
I'll have a look into Alex Burke's website as I intend to scan using my Epson V700.
Thanks again, Mike.

[M J Langdon]

Hi Vinny, I have a 35mm film camera and hand held spot meter. I never thought of buying the 35mm size and testing that for the dynamic range, does seem obvious now lol.
Thanks for the tip.

[Will Frostmill]

Color processes are very sensitive to temperature, and developing color at home is its own exacting hobby. :)

Yes, film can be recovered in Lightroom, provided you start with a scan of an uncompressed file, though inverting color negatives and having it look remotely right is fiddly. 11-13 stops is about right, though Ektar can be a little troublesome at the extremes (for me), so getting the exposure "right" in camera can save a bit of time later. As Vinny said, go play with some 35mm film, just make sure to get 16-bit tiffs and not jpegs from your scans. I really enjoyed Velvia shot underexposed, precisely for the contrasty blocked up shadows and unreal color saturation.

I am excited for you, and I hope you have a lot of fun with this!

[Deval]

Thank you for given such a detailed response. I use Lee Filters already for my digital photography, so that won't be a problem with the velvia.
I develop my black and white 35mm and 120mm films at home, but have read that colour can be very sensitive to temperature and that the chemicals are a bit dodgy to use, What are your views on this?
I'm surprised at the 11-13 stop dynamic range of the Ektar. My digital camera has just over 13 stops which I bring into printable range in Lightroom, Can film be recovered in Lightroom the same as digital Raw files?
I'll have a look into Alex Burke's website as I intend to scan using my Epson V700.
Thanks again, Mike.

At the risk of butchering the tech here...if you are scanning, there is nothing to recover...because of the response curve of film, it retains the information well from the deep shadows into the high highlights in a single image...Not trying to fire a troll shot here, but one of many reasons I spend a lot more time in film than digital is because I've never seen any digital sensor match the output on a single image without bracketing, luminosity curves, etc. ..As far as printing on paper, doesn't matter if it is digital or darkroom, zone values get compressed into a printable luminance range from what I understand in Ansels books. I've always been curious about the modern dynamic range measures...for example, a lower end nikon camera the D7000 is rated at 13.9 stops for landscape dynamic range on DXO mark...

now this is something we've all seen in digital, results similar to this website...
http://120studio.com/dynamic-range.htm
camera vs log...Again I can't really explain it well as far as tech is concerned, but that is one of the reasons using negative film is still king imo...

[M J Langdon]

At the risk of butchering the tech here...if you are scanning, there is nothing to recover...because of the response curve of film, it retains the information well from the deep shadows into the high highlights in a single image...Not trying to fire a troll shot here, but one of many reasons I spend a lot more time in film than digital is because I've never seen any digital sensor match the output on a single image without bracketing, luminosity curves, etc. ..As far as printing on paper, doesn't matter if it is digital or darkroom, zone values get compressed into a printable luminance range from what I understand in Ansels books. I've always been curious about the modern dynamic range measures...for example, a lower end nikon camera the D7000 is rated at 13.9 stops for landscape dynamic range on DXO mark...

now this is something we've all seen in digital, results similar to this website...
http://120studio.com/dynamic-range.htm
camera vs log...Again I can't really explain it well as far as tech is concerned, but that is one of the reasons using negative film is still king imo...

Thanks for all the info, I was thinking a scan would show all the details that have been recorded.
I own a D7000 and have tested it using a Sekonic spot meter on a grey card to get zone V then took images starting at 30sec in 1/3 stops all the way to 1/8000 sec then used the RGB values in Lightroom to measure recorded details. The results were -8 stops from zone V had an RGB value of 0.1 and +4 stops had an RGB value of 98.3 so that only makes 12stops, I have tried everything to get 13.9 stop but as far as I can see I hit 0 and 100 past 12 stops.
Even at 12 stops @ ISO 100 the noise after recovery makes the image look more like it was taken @ ISO400-800, so not really usable for good quality images.
There are probably other factors that effect the results.
I also found I have to dial in -0.7 exposure compensation to get my cameras spot meter as close to 50.0 RGB as possible, since doing this I have had a lot better results.
Lightrooms clipping points and my printers range were both at -3 2/3 and +4 stops from zone V which is 5 1/3 stops higher in the shadows than the camera records, thats a lot of recovery lol.

[M J Langdon]

Color processes are very sensitive to temperature, and developing color at home is its own exacting hobby. :)

Yes, film can be recovered in Lightroom, provided you start with a scan of an uncompressed file, though inverting color negatives and having it look remotely right is fiddly. 11-13 stops is about right, though Ektar can be a little troublesome at the extremes (for me), so getting the exposure "right" in camera can save a bit of time later. As Vinny said, go play with some 35mm film, just make sure to get 16-bit tiffs and not jpegs from your scans. I really enjoyed Velvia shot underexposed, precisely for the contrasty blocked up shadows and unreal color saturation.

I am excited for you, and I hope you have a lot of fun with this!

I have been in contact with an American Landscape photographer that uses Ektar 100.
He said not to put your shadows lower than -1.5 and highlights can go to +2 to even +4 before losing detail.
For the Velvia 100F he suggested + and - 2 stops otherwise the emulsion gets to thin for scanning.