Velvia 100F - dark greens rendered brown?

Hello,

just got the first few rolls of Velvia 100F back from the lab. The

slides seem to have a strange color, especially sun-lit green areas

(forests in a distance) that are a bit underexposed (half a stop to a

stop) are not green but rather brown. Similarly, rocks that are

supposed to be dark grey tend a bit to magenta or brown. On the other

hand, highlight greens are green (though warmer green than old Velvia

50), light gray rocks are grey and white snow is more or less white -

as if the green color petered out in the shadows faster than blue and

especially red. (I don't have access to a scanner right now, so I

can't show the problem on-screen.)

I had some "classic" Velvia 50 processed in the same batch and the

colors look completely normal, dark green is dark green (of course,

Velvia-green). I did a few side-by-side shots with new and old Velvia,

and the difference in the rendering of dark greens is huge, nothing

subtle (blue skies and white snow are rendered slightly differently,

but that has already been mentioned previously here in the forum).

Is this a general characteristic of the emulsion, did I get a bad

batch, or is it something in processing? Once again, old Velvia and

Sensia processed in the same batch came out normal.

Thanks in advance for all replies!

Having shot 15+ rolls of Velvia 100F I can say your observation is exactly right. The dark greens turn a greenish brown with a slight magenta overcast. It is not batd batch/processing. RVP100F responds best when the background is evenly lit.

Funnily, under ideal conditions the results are surprisingly good. For this reason alone I carry two camera bodies loaded with RVP50 and RVP 100F regularly.

Peter: V100F is a strange beast! Ever since carefully studying the expensive and lavish brochure from Fuji for V100F I have been viewing V100F images and listening to people as yourself. These lavish brochures are no casual effort, lots of money goes into their production and in the case of Fuji, excellent and technically skilled execution. That said I find the colours in V100F quite strange. Reds look muddy brown, blues take on a strange, psychotic purple, etc. On the other hand, take a look at Kodak's new E100G and 100GX. The 100G displays the most incredible neutral whites and light greys and the blues in the sky are amazingly believable. This film will not block the shadows as much as V50 does. I like V50 and would not ever trade it for V100F. Possibly V100F may show better performance than V50 when photographing under mixed lighting because of the 4th layer but as I do not photograph landscapes under fluorescent lights so what.

Instead, look at the E100G: You can look at some shots at this link:

http://www.mfoxphotography.com,

Look under Grand Tetons or Yosemite, (I think). One shot shows well rendered greens against a realistic blue sky and snow covered mountains where the snow is really white and there are no color cats that I can notice. This is an extrememly fine grained film too which is said to scan very well. This time Kodak scores big, this amazing film is the UN-Velvia!

I have been an avid user of Velvia 100F (RVP100F) since it was launched, and have obtained excellent results with it. As a user of 6x7, I had never been able to use RVP50 because it was too slow to give me depth of field together with the fast shutter speed I need for my work. RVP100F has given me the saturated (but pleasing) colours I was looking for.

Some friends of mine have had some difficulties with Velvia 100F, usually complaining about a yellowish cast in areas that should have been fairly neutral. I have never experienced this.

One of these friends decided to test out what is going on by doing some side-by-side exposures on RVP100F, RVP50 and RDPIII and sending examples of each of the films to different labs. What he found was that the RVP50 and RDPIII have consistent results across all labs (each film type being different of course); the RVP100F gave excellent results from one lab and odd colours from another. The labs giving the odd RVP100F colours had no problems with the other films.

This might mirror what you have found. I can't explain it, but it seems that the colours this film provides are sensitive to some processing issue that is not a factor for other films.

I would urge you to try the film with other labs. You might say "why bother with a film that is too fussy?" The only answer I can give is that when RVP100F is good, it is extremely good (in my view).

I suspect V100 is sensitive to color developer given these descriptions.

Fuji and Kodak processing times for E-6 have never been quite at parity with the Fuji films often requiring a bit more second/color developer time to establish proper color saturation and neutrality. Crossover with dark reds might indicate a change in Fuji's process times. Just a theory....

Oh yeah, since when did V50 deliver neutral greens in the first place?