Rating Provia 100

[carleton]

Hi
I normally use Portra 160 but am trying out some Provia 100. Shooting Portra 160, I rate the asa at 100 (mid grey) and get perfect negatives; what asa should I use to rate the Provia 100?
Thanks
Michael

[Pere Casals]

Hello Michael,

With slides (velvia, provia, and it look soon LF ektachrome) you may do the counter than with Portra.

With negative film your priority is not underexposing important areas, with slides priority is not overexposing too much important areas.

I'd rate provia at 100, but you may need to modify your exposure to not burn highlights. Very underexposed areas may require a very good scanning to be recovered, but highlights are easy to burn.

I'd suggest you use spot metering (from a slr/dslr), and making 35mm film bracketings. Write down how sky, clouds, water, people, buildings are over/under exposed in the bracketings. From that you will know how clouds look at -1, +2 or +3. And from that you will know what to do (graded ND...) when you have a too wide dynamic range in the scene.

[Pfsor]

Hello Michael,
I'd rate provia at 100, but you may need to modify your exposure to not burn highlights. Very underexposed areas may require a very good scanning to be recovered, but highlights are easy to burn.

I was using Provia 100 for thousands of pictures for more than 15 years. Always taken as a 100 ASA film. With eventual exposure compensations + or - as judged necessary from the scene. Much easier that way than trying to invent a different ASA rating and then do compensations, IMO.

[Peter Gomena]

Stand in the middle of a soccer pitch between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. on a sunny day. Turn so the sun is directly behind you. Photograph a person wearing dark pants and a white T-shirt starting at 1/100 sec at f/16(or equivalent), using the same shutter speed. Run a bracket of 1/3 stop exposures from +2/3 stop to -2/3 stop. Write down your exposures. Process the film normally. Pick the exposure that gives you good texture and detail in the T-shirt. Use that as your exposure index.

[Pfsor]

Pick the exposure that gives you good texture and detail in the T-shirt. Use that as your exposure index.

??? Why? Because in the following photographic sessions he will be always more interested in the good texture and details of the white T-shirt rather than the black trousers???

[Mark Darragh]

Michael Hello,
Based on your experience with Portra, rating Provia at 64 might be a good place to start. In my own case, I've used a Sekonic L - 508 for about twenty years and experience quickly taught me to rate transparency films at 50 with that meter. Meters do vary, as do what different photographers think constitutes "perfect" exposure, so YMMV.

Pere's suggestion about making some test exposures on roll film is a very practical one. If you shoot it in varying lighting conditions that will help you grasp what the film is capable of recording. Baring in mind you have about 5 stops of dynamic range to play with, much less than what you are used to with Portra.

All the best

[minh0204]

Provia 100f is available in 35mm format, maybe you can pick up a roll and play with bracketing first? ProcessUK always has some in stock for about £12/roll.

To answer your question I rate mine at 100, but add 1 minute of 1st development time (I use Tetenal E6 kit - it's in their instruction).

[Drew Wiley]

Rate it at 100. No need to bracket if your meter is correctly calibrated (which Mark's apparently isn't), and you know how to use it, except perhaps for initial testing purposes. If necessary add a gray card in the shot or two. Don't gamble with latitude. Chrome film like this needs fair tight exposure; it's nowhere near as forgiving as Portra or most other color neg films.

[Pere Casals]

if your meter is correctly calibrated (which Mark's apparently isn't)

Drew I think it is: https://www.markdarraghphotography.com/gallery.html

A Sekonic L-508 is top quality meter...

Drew, IMHO discrepancies come from general issues in the metering process. First the meter see different colors with different sensitivity, for example our meter may be less sensitive to blue while sky is blue, so me may tend to overexpose sky if we spot meter in it. So our metering needs to be adapted for the situation.

Then slides have to be nailed, if one is not able then better not using LF slides, IMHO, at least me I painfully remember for years a bad velvia sheet. So there is no other way than doing things well, with accurate tests (say with 35mm) and accurate metering.

Nothing on earth beyond what's a 8x10 velvia/provia sheet. By a large margin this 2019 no imaging system surpases that, burning one is like a sacrilege.

Single problem is that only a fraction of the beauty in an slide can be shown in a monitor or print, because those are inferior mediums.

[Drew Wiley]

Well, of course, Pere. I suppose most of us have at one time have had to get accustomed to the idiosyncrasies of a particular meter. I learned Kodachrome and even fussier pre-E6 Agfachrome using a primitive coupled CDS averaging meter; it worked every time. But meters can be precisely calibrated to a known standard, saving us the fuss of tweaking ASA when shooting color films. I have four Pentax digital spotmeters, one almost totally worn out but still accurate, and one almost unused for sake of a reference. If any of these deviate in the slightest I have the recalibrated in LA by the same person who does them for Hollywood filmmakers (they can't guess or wing it!). I once had a Minolta Spotmeter F too, which precisely matched my Pentax meters. But in a drawer somewhere I've still got an old Weston meter with a removable top my brother gave me. It still works, but I figure one has to consult the Oracle in Delphi or have a Saxon priest examine the entrails of an owl in order to figure it out. So when we speak of correct ASA for Provia, it has to assume a meter with standardized calibration. Otherwise, there's no common reference point. These remaining modern chrome films have very little margin for processing latitude. They push just a little, pull miserably, and neither ideally.