Did I post velvia shots ?Originally Posted by Drew Wiley
Just pull velvia/provia once in a lifetime and you'll belive.
Also Provia is excellent for push-pull : https://www.fujifilm.com/products/pr..._datasheet.pdf
If you were Fuji, would you misslead your customers to destroy their slides ?
Just test it and you'll belive. If you tested it and got bad results then you had to do something wrong in the processing, test it again...
I've already tested it forwards, backwards, rightside-up, upside-down. At one point in time, all the big labs and serious printmakers recognized the issue. Amateurs wanted Velvia just for the noise impact, kinda like today's digi hyper-saturation types. As long as it was loud they didn't care about issues like highlight crossover or poorly differentiated shadow values. So, yes, you can pull it. But don't expect the scale to stay neutral if the contrast is high to begin with. When it comes to Fuji literature, you have to read between the lines. I learned that a long time ago.
You speak with authority! I'm not anywhere as experienced as many on this forum, but pulling slide film never worked for me. When Cibachrome died, I stopped shooting LF chromes. I still shoot Provia for 35mm and 6x6 slides for projecting (mostly to hear my wife ooh and ahh). I'm not a professional so I don't need a lot of huge color prints, but the Kodak color negative films are so easy for me to get nice prints.
I'm not sure modern black and white films have much pull to them. Things are different than when Ansel was scooting around by mule or his famous Suburban with a platform on top.
Best Regards Mike
Cibachrome was itself quite idiosyncratic, so I had lots of fun trying all kinds of novel tweaks. With respect to the present discussion, one thing I experimented with is inducing specific crossovers in the film itself to offset opposite color errors at the phase, or perhaps, the other direction, to exaggerate them is they seemed visually rewarding. Color neg films and RA4 printing is very different ballgame, but fun in its own way.
Fuji Velvia has whacky color rendition, narrow exposure latitude and does not pull worth a darn (Do not care what the Fuji data sheet says), makes cartoonish fake color cibrachromes. Tried a few rolls of Velvia and sheets of Velvia (4x5) back when Fuji introduced it and promoting it big time. Velvia never presented visually appealing to me, then again, that is an opinion.
Velvia became very popular for it's tuned color rendition and high contrast.
The mostly opposite Fuji color transparency film was Fuji Astia which became one of my fave color transparency films... short lived, mostly market rejected for trying to be a moderate contrast, accurate color rendition color transparency film.... while Velvia remains in high demand to this day.. consider why is this?
The other good color transparency film that went away was Agfa RS100, another moderate contrast slightly warm rendition color transparency film. Kodak Ektachrome back in the day was known for it's bluish cast, but that can be adjusted mostly out and that version of Ektachrome can be overexposed, underdeveloped to gain a bit more contrast range.
One more thing that should be pointed out, back in the days of serious pro E6 processing labs, they all had their distinct color signature. To get color rendition correct, a batch of film needs to be gray card tested at the specific E6 lab, then cc filters as need applied to moderate the color towards being closer to neutral. This process helps to negate the effects of lighting, lens color, film color, processing color. Is this degree of control and consistency possible today with E6 color processing kits and such?
As for Cibachrome-Ilfordchrome prints, it requires a moderate contrast color transparency and contrast masking to fit the tonal range into what is possible for Cibachrome-Ilfordchrome. When Fuji Astia and Cibachrome-Ilfordchrome became a print of the past, stopped making LF color prints. Those great days are now over.
Bernice
You could start saying that it was only an opinion...
...because Velvia has been the main tool for pro landscape photographers in the last 3 decades, and still it's technically-aesthetically unsurpassed these digital days by a big margin.
In landscape (this 2019) Velvia blows miles away any other thing on earth, just see books made with velvia.
Thank you for the note. I think you are correct: 6-7 stops of dynamic range, in which about 5 stops of textural range, the range of zones which convey definite qualities of texture and recognition of substance. I was (incorrectly) referring to this.
My Youtube Channel - Darkroom and large format tutorials
"Pro" is much about revenue production, not about creative-artistic expression.
Not that difficult to crank out stuff that sells, that is much of what "pro" means.
As for those color landscape books, no thanks, been there done all that.
Do dis-regard all this as it is mere opinion of one individual, nothing more to discuss, nothing more to debate or battle over, now carry on.
Bernice
I managed one of Canada's top E6 labs in the days when E6 was rocking.. late 80's.
E6 has a great push capability and less than great pull or drop...
We used state of art Refrema processors and ran 7 days a week over 18 hours a day.
We advised all photographers to base their exposures on push 1/2 development and then if required we would then have 1 1/2 drop capability.. drop 1 was extremely popular with a starting clip test at push 1/2.
But as Drew points out dropping E6 can be problematic.
Yes, it requires some experimentation... we all know that with slide film we need extreme care with highlights, if we want to pull then we need to learn how to meter in that situation, if not we may blow highlights. But I don't think that pulling velvia is more or less more difficult that with other films of the past, it's just about learning how the film behaves with the modified processing.
Personally I feel no need to push/pull velvia, but it's a resource that it can be used...
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