Time to buy more film

[wes_carroll1]

I have been shooting Velvia exclusively for several years. I'm going

to order some film very soon and I am thinking of trying some

Provia. I've read through the archives and feel this may be worth

trying. I have a recoprocity chart taped to my light meter for

Velvia. Should I just cut all the times by a half since Provia is

rated at 100? I shoot strictly nature landscapes in 4 x 5 and have

frequent long exposures.

Any suggestions on other films I might be interested in would be

welcome. I'm not that knowledgable about the various films since I

tend to stick with what works. The thought of a little more speed is

very tempting if I don't have to sacrafice very much to achieve it.

[noshir_patel]

Not only is Provia 100F twice as fast as Velvia, it has much better reciprocity characteristics. Unless you are doing really long exposures (I don't remember but maybe like 30 sec), you don't have to correct for reciprocity failure at all. It is slightly less saturated than Velvia. If I could have only one film, I would choose Provia 100F.

[michael_griffis]

From the provia data sheet:

 

No exposure correction or color balance compensation

is required for exposures within a 1/4000 to 128 seconds

shutter speed range. However, for exposures of 128

seconds or longer, reciprocity-failure related color bal-

ance and exposure compensations are required.

 

http://www.fujifilm.com/JSP/fuji/epartners/bin/Provia100f.pdf

[ken_lee11]

Perhaps my experience is different from others, but since many of the Medium Format people I dealt with used it enthusiastically, I decided to test it out. I was shooting and scanning regular Ektachrome (not VS) at the time, and found it to have irregular color curves that were annoying to correct all the time in Photoshop. I presume that 4x5 is similar to 120/220 in this regard.

 

To my surprise, I found Provia to be even more irregular - especially its excess saturation with respect to green, such that green plants appear to be lit from inside like a glow-worm. I also found that white people, if they had any pink in their complexion, appeared to be suffering from a case of Rosacea.

 

Seeing no other advantage, I went back to Ektachrome, which I found, to my surprise, to be more balanced, color-wise, than Provia. My feeling is that film should be as balanced as possible, since one can always play with it after the fact (at least if you scan it as I do). Like so many things in Nature, balance in color film is hard to find.

[paul_coppin]

I shot both Velvia & Provia on 4x5 for a while - I've since dropped Velvia because a) a little too slow, and b) its <em> my opinion</em> that the saturation of Velvia is overstated for landscapes. Because of the differences in vividity (?vividness ??? :) I think you'll have to test it to see what ISO you like, but for my purposes, I usually shoot it at 100, and bracket if I think the scene is tricky, or believe my meter is lying, again.

[jackflesher]

I used to shoot them shoot them both regularly, and like others less V ever since Provia was improved to RDP III. It is slightly less saturated, which IMO is a good thing. It renders skintones better than V, but as mentioned it is still a touch too pink for my tastes. Reciprocity is non-existent out to 1 minute, about 1.5x at 2 minutes, and needs almost a 2x increase and a CC10M by 3 minutes -- but what the hey, how often are we really shooting it that way? I found the ISO is dead-on at 100. The green saturation is a tad high, but IMO is what makes it such a great landscape film for rendering lush foliage. FWIW I personally find E100S ("S" NOT "VS"!) better for fall color, and hence my two films of choice are now RDP III and E100S. I also much prefer the skintone rendition of E100S.

 

Cheers,

[jeff greene]

I moved from Velvia to Provia F years ago. I love it and use nothing else, recoprocity is rarely an issue and the speed is useful. A lot of people I know like Kodachrome 100VS alot. It has a Velvia like colour characteristics.

[wes_carroll1]

Thanks for all of your opinions. I think I'll go ahead and give it a shot. A fifty sheet box and three twenty sheet boxes of Quickloads should give it a chance to convince me one way or another. As for color accuracy, I used to shoot nothing but Kodachrome 25 or 64 in 35mm format. I was convinced it was the only way to go. The quality of processing was getting deplorable. Velvia was still pretty new and I hadn't tried it. I was complaining to another photographer about Kodachrome processing. He suggested I try Velvia and he claimed I'd never shoot Kodachrome again if I did. He was so right. After a couple of years I went through my files and eliminated a lot of Kodachromes. I couldn't believe how dead so many of them looked to me. Hopefully Provia will be another happy surprise.

[tedharris]

Just one quick cavet. Do not repeat do not get tempted to buy

recently out of date Provia II ... there is a lot of it floating around at

what seem to be very attractive prices ... reason ... it is not a

particularly good film .. the current Provia III is a supurb emulsion

but that cannot be said about its immediate predecessor.

 

Luck

 

Ted

[wes_carroll1]

Thanks Ted. I'll do that.

[audidudi]

I don't know, Ted. I bought 100 rolls of outdated Provia II earlier this summer in 120 form and like it quite a bit. While it's not quite as nice as RDPIII, at $57.95 delivered, it was only 1/6th the cost...

[wes_carroll1]

Okay, I ordered some. Not wanting to go totally with a new film yet, I ordered equal amounts of Provia and Velvia. Hopefully one hundred sheets will see me through autumn. I tend to shoot roll film in my Calumet roll film holder, or 35mm, only when I'm running low on sheet film. Seems once you get into larger format, it's hard to take smaller sizes seriously.