Velvia 100 discontinued in the US

[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.