Portra film was designed for portraiture. It renders (...white...) skin tones very nicely.
AFAIK, anyone who uses slide film for portraiture is a masochist.
Portra film was designed for portraiture. It renders (...white...) skin tones very nicely.
AFAIK, anyone who uses slide film for portraiture is a masochist.
Consider that, just before the digital DSLR era, slides were the most regarded choice for Pro fashion photography, the top dollar one included.Originally Posted by Jody_S
An advantage was that slides are a calibrated process not tied to a necessary postprocess, so the photographer could specify the result.
In the other hand slides are an imaging medium that this 2018 has no performance equivalent in the digital world, by far. We can talk about static contrast for example.
Single problem is that the magnificience of slides cannot travel through TCP/IP networks.
Who uses slide film for portraiture is probably a refined photographer, a perfectionist, and somebody in love with beauty.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/326815...7669005071262/
In fact today the "Provia" mode in Sony digital cameras tries to commercially exploit that prestige.
I think the use of slides also had to do with the need for a positive transparency for the making of printing plates. I'm not sure though.
You can use whatever colour film you like for making portraits - some follow rather more 'pleasing' (as socially defined) skin tone reproduction & some are rather less so. Nothing stopping you using Velvia if it suits your aesthetic (or Ultra 50 for that matter - pity it's long gone). Ektar can be pretty surprisingly nice too - if you invert it correctly.
Analysing colour repro of a transparency on your computer is not going to tell you anything useful, unless you can eliminate the variables of scanner behaviour, software etc. A daylight balanced lightbox will tell you far more, far faster. The 81A/B/C filters would be a good place to start if your transparencies are a bit cold - Provia's competition was various Ektachromes which could tend cooler, so it's not entirely surprising. It has generally seemed a tick warmer to my eye with Nikon or Fuji glass than with most of the other brands.
Well, IMHO the difference is that having the slide the printer has an absolute reference to be placed in the destination color space, to the possible extent.
A negative film does not determine well how the result has to be, because RA-4 is in the middle to get a result, and the printing process requires an interpretation to print well different films in different papers.
In the other hand Graphic Arts industry had convenient resources to use positive or negative film, but the slide was nice because the photographer could specify well the desired hues to the publisher and to the printer, so if the published result was nasty then the slide worked as a notary about who was guilty.
"Match the transparency" was easier than colour balancing a colour neg for a long time - especially in an era before colour profiling was really a thing. And transparency had a 2+ decade head start in professional imaging before neg film even vaguely began to catch up - and arguably took until the 70's & colour neg's increasing use as an artistic medium for repro houses to even begin to consider how to handle it.
Either way, much of the preference for slide film for fashion photography was down to the specific needs of bringing the image to high-volume print through non-digital processes. That's a different scenario from shooting for a limited edition of prints, a single print or digital processing.
Obviously, fine images of any subject can be made with positive film; the image linked to by Pere is just one illustration. I still wouldn't prefer velvia for portraits of Caucasian people though; I've banged my head on that particular scenario many years ago and it didn't work out for me.
We have 3 Velvias, for portraiture the 50 is the weirdest, then we have velvia 100 and the velvia 100 F. The F is less weird one. Provia can be used but the best one was the defunct Astia.
The single way I think Velvia 50 can be used for portrait is in female portraits with a ton of the right makeup, time ago I saw a velvia 50 original MF slide of a japanesse girl with white makeup, with fill front fill/key flashes and a real sunset in the back... I got atonished...
Of course it's hard to compete aganist Portra 160 in portraiture (or Fuji 160), IMHO that's the greatest spectral interpreation it can be found today for that, with the permision of Vision 3 in the right hands, no digital bug comes close to it. We see a lot film usage in the best wedding photographers, and this is not by chance.
Provia is not a portraiture specialist, so IMHO it has to be used creatively to get great results.
What IMHO is clear is that a regular a Velvia 50 portrait cannot be succesfully solver later with Photoshop, and this points the importance of the spectral interpretation at the shot time. Sadly digital sensors have that interpretation blocked to a single way, depending on Bayer dyes. With film cameras we have choices...
Astia would indeed have been the most logical choice for more subtle portraits.
I've used all three velvias and never liked the 100f. Both the 50 and the 100 are very nice - for other things than portraits in my shooting
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