Why Velvia 50 was and is so well liked?

[Wanderon]

I'm new to film so to speak in the realm of 4x5, I have used film in my 35mm camera but not the low ISO 50. Why is it that many of you like this film. I know that it is a slower film but what can it do that the 100 wouldn't do, is it the grain factor, or what? I'm wanting to try some out to see but would like some thought from you folks first. I'd like to know what type of shooting you mostly do with it. Is the new better than the older film?
Ralph

[Walter Calahan]

The way it captures color and contrast, as well as the fine grain.

[Gary Tarbert]

If you have to ask you definitley havn't used it,grain factor is not the reason colour pallette is,and no the new is not on first viewing (only exsposed 6 sheets so no critical
comparisons made yet)any better .cheers Gary

[Bill_1856]

Velvia is very useful in hiding mediocre images behind a kaleidoscope of colors.

[walter23]

Velvia is very useful in hiding mediocre images behind a kaleidoscope of colors.

No, that's the job of Fortia

For the record, I'm perfectly happy with Velvia 100, and one of my favorite films so far is Kodak Ektachrome E100VS. I don't have a lot of experience with velvia 50 though.

[SamReeves]

COLOR, COLOR, and COLOR!

[riooso]

I keep trying to get into Velvia 50 and keep going back to Velvia 100. The grain of both is excellent. 50 is like balancing a ball on a razor blade to get the right exposure. I often take the same shot with Velvia 100 and Provia 100 and the only difference is Provia has a more natural look to it. The saturation of both is very close at a good exposure. If I were to do it again I would start with Velvia 100 and Provia, much more managable and you will like the results of both. You still have to get another film that will work better in high constrast conditions but that is what is really good about sheet film you can pick the film that you want to shoot.

Good Luck,
Richard

[Wanderon]

Thanks to all of you, guess that I'll have to try it to see the color myself, to answer the question about you "defiantly haven't tried it if you have to ask" no I haven't. I have been using a box of artista 200 edu to learn. I just wanted to try out some color sheet film and wanted to see if there was difference enough between the 50 and the 100 to spend the extra money on ... I have tried a box of Velvia 100 (I'm not finished, with it yet) having fun learning on the artista. Find that I want to branch out from the B/W.

Ralph

[Ed Shapiro]

Ask 100 Photographers about film or equipment choices and you will probably get 100 different answers. It comes down to artistic and technical choices which boils down to "different strokes for different folks". Some photographers will make snide comments about films the don't particularly care for but that doesn't tell you much.

As a commercial photographer, however, I am in a different boat in that I have to understand the characters of a number of different films and match the right film to any given assignment.

In bread and butter commercial work we are producing large format transparencies for catalog and packaging reproduction. In cases like this color accuracy is of the utmost importance because the products we are photographing have to be as close as we can get to the actual color of the item. Films like Kodak Ektachrome EEP and EPP are my choice for this category of work because the offer very good color reproduction and matching qualities and work well when push or pull processing is required.

In fashion photography and more creative illustrative work one can exercise more artistic license and get into high contrast and more exaggerated color rendition. This is where the low speed, higher contrast color emulsion come into play. Many old timers like me who have false nostalgia for the old Kodachrome 16 and 25 films tend to like the slower and more contrasty films as it is reminiscent of the old Kodachrome look. Kodachrome 26 is still around but processing is hard to find and is probably very expensive nowadays.

Here is another sceneario. I do a lot of art reproduction on 8x10 film. In certain paintings it is hard to capture the entire dynamic range of the art piece on transparency film, especially when cross polarization is used to eliminate surface reflections. I use the aforementioned Kodak emulsions for that and over expose by one stop and have the lab pull process for that degree of over exposure. I get perfect range with this method.

In artistic photography your control over the color palette is a very important tool in expressing your artistic interpretation of any subject or scene. In the end the choice is up to you! Your best guide is experimentation. Try all the different products, bracket the exposures, try using polarizers to intensify saturation and standardize on a few favorite films that suit your purposes.

I hope this helps! Ed

[nicol_verheem]

A film salesman once told me about a university study on "human color memory". Basically if you are shown a color swatch, and asked 10 minutes later to pick it out of 1000 similar swatches, you'll be close. An hour later, statistically eveyone pick something 10% more saturated. 24h later, everyone picks something 20% more saturated. So basically human memory remembers color more staurated than it was.

So Fuji (especially Velvia) aims to mimick how you'll remember the scene, not how it looks. Cool story at least.

I like shooting provia and velvia of the same scene, scan the provia, and adjust in CS2 until it resembles the velvia on a light box. I find the velvia too hard to scan with a low dmax scanner like mine.