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Ed Vatza
21-Jan-2019, 09:24
Quick background. Probably 99% of my photography (both digital and film) is black & white. I am thinking about picking up some color film for my Wista but really don't know where to start. I have always heard a lot about Velvia but not sure that is where I should be starting. Besides my digital cameras are Fuji and I have played with Velvia presets and haven't been blown away. Anyway, I know film choices are personal and different strokes for different folks and all that but I would like to hear your experiences and possible recommendations. While I do an occasional portrait, I am not a portrait photographer. And while I am primarily a digital street photographer, I am using the LF camera more for landscapes/cityscapes/seascapes and the like.

Any help would be appreciated.

Ed

djdister
21-Jan-2019, 09:54
If you're just starting to shoot 4x5 color film, I suggest color neg instead of transparency so that leaves Kodak Ektar or Portra as your starting point. Both are readily available as well.

rdeloe
21-Jan-2019, 11:19
I don't shoot colour, but your question made me curious so I searched around a bit. Have you discovered this page yet? It's a thorough run down of various options in positive and negative for colour film. https://www.alexburkephoto.com/blog/2013/02/25/color-film-choices-for-landscapes Availability of any particular emulsion is a moving target these days, so before you get too excited check to see what's still sold.

Doremus Scudder
21-Jan-2019, 13:03
The first consideration when choosing a color film is how you are going to achieve a final result. Transparency film has about only one practical option: scan and make a digital print (or just admire the transparency, I guess). Color negative film has the second possibility of making traditional prints.

If you're going to be scanning anyway, I'd go with negative film because of the greater latitude and possibilities for manipulation.

Heck, if I were to start shooting color anything again, I'd probably jump ship and shoot digital.

I'm glad I just do black-and-white :)

Best,

Doremus

Pere Casals
21-Jan-2019, 13:34
I am using the LF camera more for landscapes/cityscapes/seascapes and the like.

I'd use Velvia 50/100/Provia for that. Velvia's unique footprint from spectral sensitivity is atonishing for landscape, but really bad for portraits. Provia shots landscape and people.

...but decide on you own, just buy some 35mm rolls, make exposure an filtering (Pol, graded ND) bracketings and decide. Remember that negative film should not be underexposed and slides should not be overexposed.

Velvia is not the same than your digital presets...

https://kenrockwell.com/fuji/velvia-50.htm
https://www.terragalleria.com/

Monitors are way inferior to Velvia, so you won't see all what velvia has in a today's monitor, perhaps in the future monitors will be better.

Ed Vatza
21-Jan-2019, 14:34
Heck, if I were to start shooting color anything again, I'd probably jump ship and shoot digital.

I'm glad I just do black-and-white :)

Best,

Doremus

Thanks Doremus.

... and like I said, I shoot b&w 99% of the time - film and digital. Because I am new to LF, I have been shooting/practicing with Arista.EDU Ultra 200 (because of price) but my preferred b&w film has been and is Tri-X. Where does the color come in? When I travel, which isn't often, I enjoy getting out for sunrise and capturing the color. I can certainly do that with my digital cameras but I would like to try with my LF camera. That's about it.

Larry Gebhardt
21-Jan-2019, 15:00
4x5 Velvia 50 is beautiful when properly exposed. The presets on the digital cameras don't seem to quite match it. It has a very small dynamic range so your metering needs to be perfect and you will probably want some graduated neutral density filters if you are shooting sunrise/sunset and don't want black foregrounds. I'd generally recommend you use color negative to start if you want to experiment with color. I'm fond of Ektar and Portra. One advantage is you already know how to meter for it if you shoot black and white.

Drew Wiley
21-Jan-2019, 17:19
Velvia is highly intolerant of either high contrast range or the slightest exposure error. It can be nice for low contrast scenes that need a boost, but don't believe all the other hype. What looks snappy on a lightbox can be hard to print. It's really easy to blow out the highlights and shadows with Velvia. In comparison to black and white film, any color transparency film offers a far narrower range of exposure. Color neg film is somewhat better; but if you want optimized results, never rely on the myth of careless "latitude" with that either. The best thing about Velvia is that it is an "honest" film - there simply is no latitude; so if you learn how to correctly expose that product, you can probably tame any film. If you're printing digitally and like intense hues, you can always tweak things like saturation a bit post-exposure anyway. But you can't add realistic content that isn't on the film to begin with, because its contrast range is too short! But I'm no admirer of oversaturated jam and honey atop sugar cubes imagery. About the only other large format chrome film left at this point is Fuji Provia, which is somewhat more versatile than Velvia. Chrome films are nice for the learning curve because you can quickly evaluate the result on a light box. Color neg film makes you fly by faith in the instrumentation. But in that case, you still have a serious choice of low-contrast, modest color saturation (Portra 100), med contrast higher speed (Portra 400), and a higher contrast more saturated film (Ektar 100) - not quite as contrasty as any chrome film, but a bit tricker to master than the other two Kodak color neg films just mentioned. You're obviously going to get conflicting opinions on this forum, just like any other. I've already hinted at mine - I don't like loud hues just for the sake of being loud. There are already fifty thousand stereotypical honey n' jam atop sugar cubes calendar pictures out there. Try something thoughtful instead.