What do you do with your LF transparencies???

[Pere Casals]

Yes... Velvia 50 in special makes yellows warmer and oranges redder, crafting impressive landscapes, this has an spectral footprint in the capture so there is no universal way to imitate velvia 50 well in Ps. In the same way a portrait made with Velvia 50 is to be pretty awful, and a long Ps session on it is not have a happy ending.

This is the film advantage, having dedicated mediums for different jobs. Sadly Astia was killed, it was really nice for portraits.

[Larry Gebhardt]

I would get the film lab developed, though I used to do mine. I think you can still get the chemicals, but it's been a few years since I processed any E6. Don't discount your scanner, which my do well enough if you don't under expose. Velvia is the hardest film for me to scan (and nail the exposure). Even the drum scanner won't see cleanly into the deep shadows. So I'd try Provia, or just go with color neg if you don't want the wow factor on a light table. Scan at 16 bit and use a wide gamut color space. If you do scan at 8bit use a color space that's just wide enough for the colors in a chrome. Joseph Holmes' Ekta Space PS J works well and even with 16bit I'll still use this.

As far as prints go I like to print on my own. It's rare I get it just right on the first go and waiting for the lab to turn it around is not my idea of fun. A small desktop printer might make sense if you don't plan to print a lot. You can proof at home and then send them to a lab for the large final prints.

[Drew Wiley]

The last rendition of Astia (100F) was on polyester rather than acetate base, a major asset when needing dimensional stability for mask registration. Kodak's E100G was also stable, but with a bit more contrast. I have a lot of old chromes laying around. I've made contact internegs from a few of the 8x10's for RA4 printing. It's perfectly feasible, but for good results generally requires supplementary contrast masking just like Ciba did.

[Laminarman]

Thanks Larry, I'm going to have them lab processed. I use an Epson P800 which does a great job for me. My primary concern was the scanning quality. While I don't mind getting drum scans, I can see that adding up pretty quickly.

[Mark Darragh]

You might find this of interest to compare films
https://www.onlandscape.co.uk/2010/1...lm-comparison/

https://www.onlandscape.co.uk/2011/0...arison-pt-two/

https://www.onlandscape.co.uk/2011/0...mparison-pt-3/

Realistically, unless you want to order film from Japan, your options for new transparency films are Velvia 100 and Provia. Provia is a much more versatile film with a less pronounced colour cast than RVP100. However, for someone starting out shooting colour LF, negative film is going to be much more "user friendly". Ektar 100 can be tweaked to give quite a traditional "negative" look or something much closer to the rendition of transparency film in terms of saturation and contrast. The equipment that you have is capable of producing very good quality scans and prints in the right hands. If you do take something that you want to print particularly large you could always get that drum scanned.

[Laminarman]

Thank you Mark, I'm going to dig into those. I'm primarily going to do BW but would like, at least on this trip, to do color. I just love the morning colors on the beach.