Last week, during the sunny weather, I shot a roll of Velvia. It was just after the Provia, but I didn’t finish the roll until yesterday, so I didn’t get the chance to develop it until now. While doing some of the shots I had Ekar in the other back so I could get a direct comparison. Have I mentioned how much I love slides? Like love love them. I like looking at them on a light table with a loupe, they have a quality even these scans can’t reproduce. The sharpness, the saturation, the colors cool and vibrant, they’re a totally different animal than the negative films.
Slides aren’t for everything. The Kodak films have way more exposure latitude, for example. I shot two frames of sleeping tiger each with Provia and Ektar, one frame about 1/3 stop over the incident light, the next one stop up from that. The Ektar scans might as well be the same, you can color correct them in software to be identical and nothing is lost. The Provia that’s 1 stop over has washed out color and the sky color is just plain gone.
Velvia is the same, and the shadows go black extremely quickly, so you had best plan on that. And 50 speed is mighty slow. Shots of the cooling pond have what looks like grey clouds, but they aren’t clouds. They are pelicans. Even in full daylight, if you’re looking for extra depth of field you’re going to hold the shutter open way longer than any Portra. Even the extra stop of Provia and Ektar is appreciated. The trade off is almost no grain, and saturation that is more real than real.
Enough yammering. Here are the photos. Sleeping Tiger, the cooling pond, and the tree were all taken back to back for direct comparisons. The Velvia shot of the dredge was taken before the sun started to pop on the powerplant, so even though it’s only a couple minutes before the Ektar, it is not a direct comparison. The light just got better over the course of 5-10 minutes before dying off completely. I might have gotten a better shot in the good light on the next roll. The Ektar is using 1 stop GND on the sky, but pretty much straight out of the camera, so I’m really hoping I got something as nice on the next roll of slides.
