I just moved up to 4x5 from a Pentax 6x7 and am eager to shoot different films of the same scene(western landscapes) to fine tune the shot I am after and to eventually figure out what film I will need at a certain situation. On the 6x7 I shot mostly Velvia 50(old) and Velvia 100 with some Velvia 100F and Provia 100F. After looking through my slides the last couple of times I am finding more and more that Velvia just is not cutting it anymore on some scenes. In no particular order, on some scenes it is too saturated, not enough detail in the shadows and highlights do to strong contrast, "Disneyland on Ken Kesey acid" colors, and fake looking.
I like the film right before sunrise to a couple of minutes after the first light hits the landscape and the very last rays of light at sunset to dusk, overcast lighting with soft light, and when I want strong contrast but the colors and light on the landscape is not naturally too saturated. I have a mountain alpenglow scene shot on velvia 100 that was naturally already quite colorful and saturated on its own and the Velvia 100 totally exaggerated it and it looks awful.
So I am looking at Astia 100F for the first time and thinking about revisiting Provia 100F. When comparing Velvia to Astia should I keep the exposure the same and expect to get half a stop of shadow detail and half a stop of highlight detail or should I just find a different exposure by metering light and dark areas?? For example I know with Velvia that if I measure highlights at zone VII-VII 1/3 I will hit the max detail for highlights. Can I expect to measure a highlight at zone VIII with Astia and still get detail(example:snow)?? Er gotta go, bed time, work early tomorrow, will post more later, thanks.
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