Velvia 100 discontinued in the US

[Steven Ruttenberg]

https://petapixel.com/2021/07/06/fujifilm-forced-to-discontinue-velvia-100-film-in-the-u-s-by-the-epa/

I just bought 5 boxes before BH whacks it. 8x10 is already doa.

[Two23]

That's just ridiculous.


Kent in SD

[Drew Wiley]

Understaffed EPA has better things to do than listen to haggling about a single f-stop change in a tiny product category. And with all that Fuji has been going through regarding pandemic staffing and supply chain issues, plus a big recent ransomware attack, they probably have more important things to do too. Furthermore, a blanket chemical ban here is the US will likely be followed by an even stronger analogous ruling in the EU, which might spell the end of the 100 speed version entirely. We photographers will just have to do what we have always done over and over and over - adapt.

[Two23]

We photographers will just have to do what we have always done over and over and over - adapt.


Bureaucrats have long been out of control and live in a theoretical world. Glad I've shifted into wet plate. I can make my own chemicals from scratch. Screw Fuji, I'm done with them.


Kent in DS

[SergeyT]

For as long as there is at least one emulsion remains in every category not a big deal...
All "Pro" emulsions today are great

[Vaughn]

This one does not hit me, but the ban on chromium in the workplace in Germany and the resulting downfall of Portriga Rapid helped me to explore different paths -- which in turn helped me greatly in the long run.
I'd rather have the bureaucrats in control then the general public on such technical issues...not that it is always the optimal solution, but intelligent benevolent dictators are hard to come by and keep around.

[Steven Ruttenberg]

Any govt control is unwarranted. Almost all are about as bright as a black rock. Hopefully the kodax E100 will stay with us.

[Alan Klein]

Fortunately I like Velvia 50 better than 100 but in 4x5 I have to order directly from Japan at higher prices including for shipping.

[Deyoung]

A bit of cherry picking in the EPA form, but this paragraph is a bit concerning.

"Benefits. EPA was not able to quantify the benefits of reducing human and environmental exposures to PIP (3:1). As discussed in more detail in Unit II.A., EPA did not perform a risk evaluation for PIP (3:1), nor did EPA develop quantitative risk estimates. Therefore, the Economic Analysis (Ref. 3) qualitatively discusses the benefits of reducing exposure under the final rule for PIP (3:1), as summarized in Unit III.B.2."

From this link (https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2021/01/06/2020-28692/phenol-isopropylated-phosphate-31-pip-31-regulation-of-persistent-bioaccumulative-and-toxic)

Banning without any evaluation? is this what I'm reading here?

[BrianShaw]

Perhaps Kumar will step up.

(Snip).
And do what? Change the EPA? Change chemistry?

[Mortimer]

The article says Velvia 50 doesn't have the dread chemical, would be nice if Fuji brought that back to the US as a substitute (since I like that more anyway). Not going to happen I'm sure.

[MikeH]

Does anyone know why Fuji doesn't want to sell Velvia 50 in the US? Is it for sale, for example, in Canada, or Europe?

[Bernice Loui]

Shameless plug.. Free 120 roll films. Cleaning out old Hasselblad stuff that has been LONG gone.

Found some OLD Fuji Velvia 50 in 120 roll, five pack. One roll was more than enough.

IMO, Fuji's very best color transparency film was Astia, discontinued many years ago. Ponder why?


Bernice

[George Hart]

IMO, Fuji's very best color transparency film was Astia

I am with you on that


discontinued many years ago. Ponder why?

Go on, tell us…!

[SergeyT]

Turns out, the best Fuji [color positive] film has been Provia 100F

[unityofsaints]

No great loss, Velvia 50 is the real Velvia anyway - just a shame that it has to be imported from Japan.

[Ethan]

Just read this... apparently the EPA has banned one of the chemicals in Velvia 100, so Fuji is stopping sales in the US. I prefer Velvia 50 myself, but if you’re a fan of 100, you may want to stock up. I wonder if We will still be able to but it from Japan?

If Kumar is seeing this... do you know if you will still be able to ship it to the US?
https://petapixel.com/2021/07/06/fujifilm-forced-to-discontinue-velvia-100-film-in-the-u-s-by-the-epa/ (https://petapixel.com/2021/07/06/fujifilm-forced-to-discontinue-velvia-100-film-in-the-u-s-by-the-epa/)

[Drew Wiley]

Provia was on wretched unstable triacetate sheet base. Endless headaches trying to keep it in register. I happened to get a lot of it in 8X10 cheap, all three generations of it; so that's what I used for awhile until superior PET base products arrived from both Fuji and Kodak. Astia 100F was the best balanced of all of them, but without the lightbox pop that many wanted. I did use Velvia 100F for a few things back in Cibachrome days.

[Jim Andrada]

+1 on Astia. Velvia always seemed too saturated for my taste.

[Dugan]

I've been a fan of Velvia 50 since it was introduced.
I shoot mostly B/W, but when I shoot color, I shoot COLOR!
(Color as subject matter).
I hope that Fuji decides to re-introduce Velvia 50 to the US in sheet film sizes, and doesn't give up on the US market entirely.

[Bernice Loui]

Much a visual preference indicator for the majority. Velvia 50's color rendition and overall image contrast has been "tweaked" for known visual appeal. This tweaked visual image rendition is NOT realistic or accurate, it is much about appeal. Fuji is not the only image products supplier that is well aware of what most would like to see in their images, optics manufactures offer Foto graphic lenses with high contrast- perceived sharpness knowing this is often a highly appealing design goal.

Not about right -vs- wrong, it is much about preferences no different than food in some ways. The byproduct of this market driven perception becomes the ability for highly color accurate / precise color rendition films and related products difficult to not available at all. Given these are return on investment monetary devices, design and production of stuff the market is not interested in or have limited market appeal stunts Foto graphic products like Fuji Astia.


Bernice





I am with you on that

Go on, tell us…!

[Drew Wiley]

Depends of the overall scene contrast itself somewhat, Bernice. Having that higher level of contrast sometimes equates to better visual separation of otherwise close hues. For example, I'd noticed how Velvia can differentiate closely related hues of "clean" green in a manner no other film can, especially in softer contrast settings. I can see all that with my own eyes at the time of the shot. Of course, it might take an exceptional lens to replicate it on the film, and afterwards might prove outright impossible to correctly render using any kind of color print media, much less CobWeb presentation. But it illustrates a point.

I realize that tricky repro qualities is not what drove the appeal of Velvia, but light box or slide projector pop. But it did fill a niche; and looking through a lot of my old sheet film chromes, Velvia did bag certain color issues quite competently, even though other films proved more versatile to me overall. But this is all pretty much moot today, as people gravitate toward pumping nitro fuel into their computers and pushing the saturation siders to the point of your eyeballs popping out of their sockets, torturing just about any kind of color film into sheer chromatic noise.

[Bernice Loui]

In fewer words, little if any dis-agreement on this.

Bernice



Depends of the overall scene contrast itself somewhat, Bernice. Having that higher level of contrast sometimes equates to better visual separation of otherwise close hues. For example, I'd noticed how Velvia can differentiate closely related hues of "clean" green in a manner no other film can, especially in softer contrast settings. I can see all that with my own eyes at the time of the shot. Of course, it might take an exceptional lens to replicate it on the film, and afterwards might prove outright impossible to correctly render using any kind of color print media, much less CobWeb presentation. But it illustrates a point.

I realize that tricky repro qualities is not what drove the appeal of Velvia, but light box or slide projector pop. But it did fill a niche; and looking through a lot of my old sheet film chromes, Velvia did bag certain color issues quite competently, even though other films proved more versatile to me overall. But this is all pretty much moot today, as people gravitate toward pumping nitro fuel into their computers and pushing the saturation siders to the point of your eyeballs popping out of their sockets, torturing just about any kind of color film into sheer chromatic noise.

[Steven Ruttenberg]

100% agree. Digital images from sales, etc are worse. The colors are so saturated they are not real. It seems to be the fad of early 21st century. Like the quick return on a dslr image and the live view and histogram in real time. No one has patience to shoot a scene correctly if there is such a thing, but many rush because it is free with dslr to shoot a 1000 images. And when you do, statistically you should get at least one image that is useable.

Velvia may not be the easiest to use, but one can get there if they know what they are doing.


Depends of the overall scene contrast itself somewhat, Bernice. Having that higher level of contrast sometimes equates to better visual separation of otherwise close hues. For example, I'd noticed how Velvia can differentiate closely related hues of "clean" green in a manner no other film can, especially in softer contrast settings. I can see all that with my own eyes at the time of the shot. Of course, it might take an exceptional lens to replicate it on the film, and afterwards might prove outright impossible to correctly render using any kind of color print media, much less CobWeb presentation. But it illustrates a point.

I realize that tricky repro qualities is not what drove the appeal of Velvia, but light box or slide projector pop. But it did fill a niche; and looking through a lot of my old sheet film chromes, Velvia did bag certain color issues quite competently, even though other films proved more versatile to me overall. But this is all pretty much moot today, as people gravitate toward pumping nitro fuel into their computers and pushing the saturation siders to the point of your eyeballs popping out of their sockets, torturing just about any kind of color film into sheer chromatic noise.

[SergeyT]

Speaking of accuracy in color reproduction... If one is working with natural light then light variations through the day , season , etc, influence perceived colors often times more than variations in emulsions (velvia, provia, ektachrome, etc)
I would generalize by saying that in landscape\nature photography color accuracy is not that important and some images do call for "extra" saturated colors while other images may not require color information at all. And there are photographers who desaturate images taken on color film and print them in B&W. Is it a crime , bad behaviour , cheating?

[pdmoylan]

... further reduction in LF chromatic color film choices. 10 Sheet Kodak E100G is now $55. Hmm.

I found Velvia 100 overly magenta in most situations (preferring Velvia 100F which is no longer available), and as Drew mentions, Velvia 50 was at its best in low light, where fine details and color differentiation as well as acceptable color shift with reciprocity failure were its hallmarks. Using Velvia in bright light meant loss of shadow details or blowouts in highlight areas, so used E100 in its various forms and to a lesser extent Provia for those situations.

Provia is acceptable for most outdoor work, but the Velvia luminance is missing.

Rodney Lough still uses 8x10 Astia, its lower contrast, saturation, and greater color accuracy is apparent. A couple of those Astia images are to die for (IMHO), whereas most images with the IQ3 much less appealing.

With the recent shift to film by younger photo enthusiasts, who will fill the demand for chromatic film choices?

[Bernice Loui]

As previously discussed to excessive length already, absolute color accuracy and exposure density for color transparencies made outdoors under the real world varied conditions of stuff being Fotographed outdoors is going to be more than a challenge. This easily justifies applying films like Velvia as a interpretive color rendering of color landscape and similar outdoor color images.. Yet, there are absolutes for color rendition.

No question on color's effects in emotional response, question becomes,, what might be the emotional goal of colors rendered in the print?
Rather than just absolute accuracy of color rendition/contrast rendition and a long list of other factors in any given color print?


Bernice



Speaking of accuracy in color reproduction... If one is working with natural light then light variations through the day , season , etc, influence perceived colors often times more than variations in emulsions (velvia, provia, ektachrome, etc)
I would generalize by saying that in landscape\nature photography color accuracy is not that important and some images do call for "extra" saturated colors while other images may not require color information at all. And there are photographers who desaturate images taken on color film and print them in B&W. Is it a crime , bad behaviour , cheating?

[Thad Gerheim]

I think due to our mind's interpretation of what we see, accuracy itself is subjective. I've heard that Fuji's secret about Velvia is that it was designed for photographing in Japan under an overcast sky. And Fuji was surprised that it sold so well in the US. I know that I'm surprised to see so much blue in the shadows on Provia, our mind filters a lot of what is accurately there. And I prefer Velvia when photographing vegetation on overcast days, because it's closer to what I saw, not what was actually there.

[Paul Cunningham]

If you just bought any of this in 4x5 from B&H, check the expiration dates. I just received 6 boxes all with dates of 2021-5, and will be contacting them.

[Paul Cunningham]

Follow up: B&H says they don't expect to be restocked (current stock is 11), so I don't want to risk returning my order at this point. They offered a $15 per box discount because it is expired, which I accepted.

[Deyoung]

Just checked the box I bought, yep, expired as of 2021-05. I bought only one box so not really going to worry about it too much.

[Torontoamateur]

It is not discontinued in Canada but it is rarely in stock up here

[fotopfw]

Any govt control is unwarranted. Almost all are about as bright as a black rock. Hopefully the kodax E100 will stay with us.
I'm totally satisfied with E100, so I'm hoping also that this will be available for some time.

[neil poulsen]

Understaffed EPA has better things to do . . . .

Adept adapting. :)

[Drew Wiley]

Yep. There's a multi-billion dollar industrial superfund site about fifteen minutes up the freeway next to the bridge, where the temporary asphalt containment layer is beginning to erode into the Bay due to sea level rise, with horrible mutagenic effects already showing up in fish and harbor seals, and no doubt in people eating fish next. Directly across the straight, who knows how many billions have already been spent trying to clean up the old shipyard. I know quite a few people with horrible health who once worked there, or died prematurely. There was only one EPA agent for this entire metropolitan area trying to enforce legal lead paint removal standards for homes and commercial sites. At one time only a single person monitored the vast illegal pesticide trade in the San Joaquin Valley - a dangerous job because not only did the same cartels who smuggled in cocaine traffic these pesticides, but due to the inherent health risks of the occupation itself. That one person was a close personal friend and almost exploded with all kinds of weird cancers, and died at 52, which is about as long as most crop duster pilots live. So yeah, I'd assess that the EPA has some pretty harsh priorities still ahead of them. But film manufacturers have their own kind of economic and distribution priorities. Take it all in stride, and realize that people would be cussing at you too if you had to shoulder the same kind of responsibility. Nobody is perfect.