Newbie Question: Velvia 50 MF Exposure

[Christoph C. Feldhaim]

I'll be in Mallorca the next 10 days after easter and shoot with various films - my first real trip with my new Mamiya 7ii.
Among Portra 160, Ektar 100 and some B/W films I also bought some Velvia 50, which I never tried before.

Going through various forums and blogs I find all sorts of statements and if I got it right I should do the following:

#1 - Normal exposure at ISO 50, no overexposure like ISO 40 (as suggested on many forums)
#2 - With spot metering avoid to have anything above +2 and anything below -3 from neutral 18% grey.
#3 - Not use it in contrasty light, but rather in mild light at morning and evening to give muted colors a boost.

Unfortunately I do not have time to do tests for my own now, and there seems to be no opportunity to have a test roll developed in Mallorca - nobody does E6 there as far as I could find out.
The good thing is I have a spotmeter and can use rule #2.

Would you support #1-#3?
Any additional ideas or corrections?

Thanks for your answers
Cheers
~Chris

[amsp]

Sounds about right to me. Meter for highlights, you don't want to over expose slide film, if anything you might under expose by 1/3 of a stop for even punchier colors. Slide film in general and velvia in particular is very contrasty in itself, so like you said it's not something you want to use in contrasty light. If in doubt, bracket.

[Slobodan Blagojevic]

Or grab a coffee with our friend Rob, he was shooting Kodachrome, and could surely tell you a thing or two about exposing it.

But I think you are worrying too much and overcomplicating it. I was shooting Kodachrome and Ektachrome 100 VS (Kodak's response to Velvia), using a spot meter, and looking for medium gray areas in the scene to measure from, and let the rest fall where it may. Or I used incident mode. Or gradual neutral density filters if contrast too strong.

[theguywitha645d]

When shooting slide film with my Mamiya 6, I mostly used a spot meter--I really never used the camera meter, but a handheld meter. I used the box rating for the film. As far a scene contrast, I would expose accordingly for the scene--I would not not take a picture because of a particular contrast, but make an exposure and use the contrast to my advantage. I have certainly shot slide film at every hour of the day and would not hesitate to do so.

[Christoph C. Feldhaim]

I have shot a lot of Kodachrome and other slide films in the past (which reminds of finally updating my outdated website) , but not Velvia.
So - the basics of slide film are not greek to me, I just wanted a bit of feedback on Velvia 50.
Seems I'm going to be fine with what I know now.
Just found out another funny rule for Velvia:

#4 - Don't shoot people or they become too red.

I'm quite curious about the difference between Ektar 100 and Velvia 50.
Ektar 100 to me often looks too saturated, I expect Velvia to behave similar, just even more contrasty and maybe a bit colder.
With my LS-9000 I expect to get more from the shadows when scanning than one would see in a projection.

And yes, Rob and I will most likely meet and see what we come up with.

Thanks all for your answers - I feel safer now with this legendary landscape film.

Cheers
~Chris

[Gandalf]

I think you need to run some tests and see what you think. Also talk to the lab where you are having it processed and ask for exposure recommendations. I always ran Velvia at 40 or +1 at 80, Provia at 80 or +1 at 160. Astia and Kodak films I ran straight. Velvia at 50 can result in dense shadows that are hard to scan. Whether this was influenced by my own personal aesthetic, my meter or my labs I can't say.

[Anders_HK]

-2.5 to +2.5 approx, leave on ISO50 (unless you later determine that you want to do different)

Mid tone in a scene should be mid tone in slide (balanced metering).

Yet do not worry too much of metering and relay on the metering in the Mamiya 7II.

The important is to know and understand how the metering works in the Mamiya 7II, or to be precise where the sensitivity is and that it vary per your focal length! See attached, first one from Mamiya. The second attachment is one that I made based on the first.

For a scene that does not lend itself for balanced metering, then you can use a 1 degree spot meter per the zone system (for slide film) essentially. Dont recall if the Mamiya 7II has spot metering, but that is not 1 degree spot metering in case it has, so be aware and read up what it is. You can of course also use an incident meter e.g. a small Gossen Digisix.

Best regards,
Anders

P.S. Looking back, I wish I had shot all my film images with Mamiya 7II, great camera, sharp optics. Regarding Velvia 50, use if for landsape in what is good photographic light, also details in overcast. If like when I got my first rolls of Velvia years back the colors will blow you away, a magic enhanced rendering of reality. Lovely.

[Christoph C. Feldhaim]

Seems it was good to start this thread, since what I heared is, that Velvia 50 is quite another beast than Kodachrome.

Concerning the meter of the Mamiya 7 - I'm aware - at 150 mm it works like an averaging, at 80 mm like a center weighted average and at 43 mm like a spot. Pretty much like the images above show. But I'll also have a Minolta spot and my old Lunasix 3 (I want to compare and see if its new battery adapter works correctly) with me and a grey card. So concerning exposure I think I'm at least over-motorized.

And yes - I think when in doubt I'll do some bracketing.

I'm quite curious about the results. Usually I'm not a big fan of oversaturated colors and mainly shoot Portra 160, even for landscape. But sometimes I like Ektar 100 and now I want to try Velvia as a second punchy film.

Looking forward to it. Tuesday in the morning I'll fly.

~Chris

[MarkL]

Watch out for any over-exposure especially when reds are present, the result can look almost cartoonish when it's bad. The high red sensitivity can bring out red on the film images you can hardly see in real life so sometimes you may be surprised, I've shot provia with early morning fog around and it looked gray (as it was) and the velvia shots were quite red.

You don't mention grads which for landscapes with any sky are a must have. These are not so easy to position with a rangefinder.

Some love this film and some hate it, I fall into the latter group!

[Alan Klein]

Here's Velvia 50 scanned with a flat bed.  I find the shadows don't block up as much as with 35mm film (Ektachrome).  http://www.flickr.com/photos/alanklein2000/tags/velvia/

I always start at box rating then bracket.  Velvia is hard on people - too much red.  Good luck.  Sounds like a nice trip.

[allenmacaulay]

Any additional ideas or corrections?

If you have a small point & shoot digital camera, bring it along as a quick way to approximate the dynamic range of a given scene.  If the P&S camera blows out or blocks up on a scene, or both, Velvia 50 will very likely do the same.  You can then decide whether or not you want to take the picture anyway and figure out the exposure changes you'll need to make to avoid blowing out the film.  I use an older Canon compact to do my scene checks when I'm shooting with Velvia 50, it's saved me from bad frames as well as giving me some good shots in lighting conditions which I initially thought were too contrasty.

[HarperPhotos]

Hello,

In the days when I shot 4x5, 120 and 35mm film I always shot Fuji Velvia at 32iso and Kodak E100s at 80iso.

Cheers

Simon 

[Christoph C. Feldhaim]

If you have a small point & shoot digital camera, bring it along as a quick way to approximate the dynamic range of a given scene.  If the P&S camera blows out or blocks up on a scene, or both, Velvia 50 will very likely do the same.  You can then decide whether or not you want to take the picture anyway and figure out the exposure changes you'll need to make to avoid blowing out the film.  I use an older Canon compact to do my scene checks when I'm shooting with Velvia 50, it's saved me from bad frames as well as giving me some good shots in lighting conditions which I initially thought were too contrasty.

Sounds like a good idea - I'll have my S95 with me.
Especially the histogram might help a lot to see the scenes luminosity distribution in a more technical way.

Hello,
In the days when I shot 4x5, 120 and 35mm film I always shot Fuji Velvia at 32iso and Kodak E100s at 80iso.
Cheers
Simon 

Simon - are you sure this would work withj the new Velvia?
How long ago has this been?
I found statements about overexposing newer Velvia 50 being a bad idea, as opposed to older batches of the film where many people exposed with ISO 40.

[HarperPhotos]

Hello,

I think the last roll of film I shot was about 2004.

Cheers

Simon

[Christoph C. Feldhaim]

I think I'll stick with the ISO 50 for one simple reason:
The film is going to be scanned with a Nikon LS-9000.
With the possibility of Multiexposure (Basically an HDR technique for scanners)
on this anyways great scanner I expect to get much more from the shadows than
with an ordinary flatbed scanner.
Somewhere on the net I found someone who demonstrated this in a blog article (forgot the link).
So I think I'll use a mix of spot metering and scene checking with my compact and try to keep everything within a range of + 2.5 stops.

Thanks everyone for your answers so far.
I just printed my boarding card.
17 hours left to takeoff.


Cheers
~Chris

[Christoph C. Feldhaim]

I always worked on the premise that Velvia's exposure latitude was between 1/3 and 1/2 stop.

But whatever, have a great time, and if you do meet up with Rob then give him a man-hug from us all ;-)

Well - with + 2.5 stops I was referring to the DR of the scene (at least the relevant parts if it - otherwise I'd have to shoot neutral greys only, would I?

And yes - I'm looking forward to meet Rob and have some in-depth talking with him about the various things we can't discuss online .

[allenmacaulay]

Sounds like a good idea - I'll have my S95 with me.
Especially the histogram might help a lot to see the scenes luminosity distribution in a more technical way.

Since you have a Canon this opens up yet another option.  You can load the Canon Hack software onto a memory card which then enables all sorts of options such as a live RGB histogram, clipping indicators, Zebra mode which highlights all the blown and blocked up parts of a scene, and various other fun things.

Velvia was the trickiest film I ever used. The only way I could be sure of getting an optimum exposure was to bracket.

But it gets worse, what looked to be the optimum exposure on the lightbox was often not the optimum exposure for scanning. And it gets even worse, the optimum exposure for scanning depended on the type of scanner. Flatbed scans couldn't extract anything like the shadow detail of drumscans.

Boy did I find out about that one the hard way.  After my initial struggles I finally managed to get pictures which looked great on my slide projector only to have them look like complete crap when I tried to scan them.  Then again I have a cheap consumer level scanner which is only used for sharing photos on the web, when I had the same pictures scanned by someone using a Nikon 9000ED the results were a lot better but it still flaked out on a few pictures.  I've considered having one of those frames drum scanned just to see how it turns out but haven't gotten around to it yet.

[Christoph C. Feldhaim]

Just installed CHDK again (I had done this months ago).
The RGB Histogram looks interesting along with teh Zebra mode as well.
Now I'm just a bit afraid how accurate the cameras ISO will match my film ISO.

[MarkL]

Now I'm just a bit afraid how accurate the cameras ISO will match my film ISO.

Doesn't fix the film ISO accuracy side but with my D700 I used the true iso found by the tests on dxo and it now agrees with my sekonic meter. May be a good first step.

[Christoph C. Feldhaim]

Well - my holidays are over now and today I shot the last of 10 rolls of Velvia 50.
I'll know within the next days how it all worked ....