ssmc
Well-known
I just found a couple of forgotten rolls of Velvia 50 in the back of the fridge (not the freezer) that expired in 2012. I haven't shot a roll of slide film since sometime in the 80s. The cameras these two rolls are going into only have shutter speeds and apertures in whole stops (or slightly off in the case of the IIIf). I will be using a VC Meter II.
My question is this: given the age of the film (dunno if being in the fridge makes a difference at this stage), say the meter suggests a particular exposure that falls exactly between what I can get on the camera, do I shoot it at the closest I can get under, or over? I've read that you need to pretty much nail the exposure with slide film, but some extra confusion comes from the general advice (if I have this right) that for slides, unlike negs, it's better to go slightly under than over, but that expired film usually responds to a bit more exposure!
FWIW I plan to shoot both rolls at the same time to see how these two cameras feel against one another, and the results they produce, so I don't plan on any funky cross-processing or anything.
Any advice greatly appreciated!
Scott
My question is this: given the age of the film (dunno if being in the fridge makes a difference at this stage), say the meter suggests a particular exposure that falls exactly between what I can get on the camera, do I shoot it at the closest I can get under, or over? I've read that you need to pretty much nail the exposure with slide film, but some extra confusion comes from the general advice (if I have this right) that for slides, unlike negs, it's better to go slightly under than over, but that expired film usually responds to a bit more exposure!
FWIW I plan to shoot both rolls at the same time to see how these two cameras feel against one another, and the results they produce, so I don't plan on any funky cross-processing or anything.
Any advice greatly appreciated!
Scott
doolittle
Well-known
In general lower iso film will age better than higher iso film. 2012 isn't that long expired and it was refrigerated. I would shoot at box speed.
ssmc
Well-known
Ah, of course, I didn't think of the low ISO vs. aging. That makes sense!
I agree with doolittle. For Velvia only around two years out of date, cold stored, I wouldn't vary from normal exposure at all.
You need to take comments about underexposing Velvia to Eg. boost saturation with a grain of salt. It depends very much on how you plan to view/use the processed transparencies as to whether you follow this advice or not.
If you prefer to view the slides via projection you can underexpose your film a little and enjoy the results when seen on a white screen. On the other hand, if you want to scan the frames, by rating the film higher than 50, you are only making life very much harder for yourself by underexposing a film that is already one of the most contrasty types available, and which many scanners will already struggle to extract good clean detail from what can (depending on the scene and your lighting, of course) be very dense shadow areas indeed.
If you have access to a high end scanner able to deliver clean shadow detail from Velvia 50 you might be willing to go this way anyway. I love projecting my 35mm Velvia frames (there is still nothing, repeat, nothing, in colour that looks as good as a well exposed, projected transparency in my view). But I also like to scan my films and Velvia can challenge any consumer level scanner even when it is perfectly exposed. For this reason, I tend to incident meter my transparency exposure settings, and quite often, when using my older cameras with full shutter speeds and half f stops, when faced with Eg. underexposing a quarter stop or over exposing by the same amount, I will usually go for slightly over, with a view to trying to keep the scanning process manageable.
It is very true that transparency films are unforgiving of overexposure. They have nothing like the latitude of black and white negative, or most colour negative films. It is sort of like digital imaging, in this respect (or, to be fair, like digital imaging used to be a few years ago). It is the highlights that blow out rapidly, which is precisely why incident light measurement works so well, as, when done correctly, this will prevent highlights blowing out just about every time.
Now having said all this, you can give Velvia a little extra light in most situations. As mentioned above, it can't take much over exposure but it will usually look OK up to about a half a stop "hot" and, if there are any shadow areas in the scene you would like to maximise your scan detail from, this can help the scanner pick this up. If you go more than about half a stop over, highlights will blow out rapidly and then it is all finished, there will be nothing to recover when you edit. Incident metering makes it much easier to judge where the highlights are. If you use a reflective metering process then, as you will have gathered, you will need to be fairly discriminating in what you take a reading off in terms of reflectivity and the light hitting it, as you can quite easily come to grief, otherwise.
These are general comments, as not all subjects are created equally, and, depending on your lighting conditions and subject, some scenes will naturally be much more challenging to image with this films dynamic range than others, and obviously Eg. subjects in open shade will be more manageable than, say, a pretty girl under an umbrella at the beach on a sunny day, or scenes with snow and shadows. Sometimes you just have to accept that you can't capture it all (or even close to it) and must make a creative choice according to subject, and whether the shadow or the highlight portions are more important to save. But generations of National Geographic photographers managed, in spite of these challenges, to produce superlative photographs of all manner of subjects with transparency films (Kodachrome, in many cases), so, do not be swayed by those who say you must shoot neg, or that it can't be done. History suggests otherwise. And when you get Velvia right, no other colour film still on the market today comes close to it and then it is all worth it.
Cheers,
Brett
You need to take comments about underexposing Velvia to Eg. boost saturation with a grain of salt. It depends very much on how you plan to view/use the processed transparencies as to whether you follow this advice or not.
If you prefer to view the slides via projection you can underexpose your film a little and enjoy the results when seen on a white screen. On the other hand, if you want to scan the frames, by rating the film higher than 50, you are only making life very much harder for yourself by underexposing a film that is already one of the most contrasty types available, and which many scanners will already struggle to extract good clean detail from what can (depending on the scene and your lighting, of course) be very dense shadow areas indeed.
If you have access to a high end scanner able to deliver clean shadow detail from Velvia 50 you might be willing to go this way anyway. I love projecting my 35mm Velvia frames (there is still nothing, repeat, nothing, in colour that looks as good as a well exposed, projected transparency in my view). But I also like to scan my films and Velvia can challenge any consumer level scanner even when it is perfectly exposed. For this reason, I tend to incident meter my transparency exposure settings, and quite often, when using my older cameras with full shutter speeds and half f stops, when faced with Eg. underexposing a quarter stop or over exposing by the same amount, I will usually go for slightly over, with a view to trying to keep the scanning process manageable.
It is very true that transparency films are unforgiving of overexposure. They have nothing like the latitude of black and white negative, or most colour negative films. It is sort of like digital imaging, in this respect (or, to be fair, like digital imaging used to be a few years ago). It is the highlights that blow out rapidly, which is precisely why incident light measurement works so well, as, when done correctly, this will prevent highlights blowing out just about every time.
Now having said all this, you can give Velvia a little extra light in most situations. As mentioned above, it can't take much over exposure but it will usually look OK up to about a half a stop "hot" and, if there are any shadow areas in the scene you would like to maximise your scan detail from, this can help the scanner pick this up. If you go more than about half a stop over, highlights will blow out rapidly and then it is all finished, there will be nothing to recover when you edit. Incident metering makes it much easier to judge where the highlights are. If you use a reflective metering process then, as you will have gathered, you will need to be fairly discriminating in what you take a reading off in terms of reflectivity and the light hitting it, as you can quite easily come to grief, otherwise.
These are general comments, as not all subjects are created equally, and, depending on your lighting conditions and subject, some scenes will naturally be much more challenging to image with this films dynamic range than others, and obviously Eg. subjects in open shade will be more manageable than, say, a pretty girl under an umbrella at the beach on a sunny day, or scenes with snow and shadows. Sometimes you just have to accept that you can't capture it all (or even close to it) and must make a creative choice according to subject, and whether the shadow or the highlight portions are more important to save. But generations of National Geographic photographers managed, in spite of these challenges, to produce superlative photographs of all manner of subjects with transparency films (Kodachrome, in many cases), so, do not be swayed by those who say you must shoot neg, or that it can't be done. History suggests otherwise. And when you get Velvia right, no other colour film still on the market today comes close to it and then it is all worth it.
Cheers,
Brett
taemo
eat sleep shoot
I hope this is not off-topic but over the weekend, I decided to shoot my first 2 4x5 Provia sheets, expired in 2008, cold stored.
I developed the sheets yesterday with my 2 weeks old Arista E-6 kit and to my disappointment, the images turned out 2 stops under-exposed.
4x5 Provia 100f by earl.dieta, on Flickr
this was recoverable but the other one unfortunately is too underexposed.
someone recommended me not to change ISO for expired slides and I had no issues developing and exposing a 220 Astia 100 (exp2002) roll the week prior.
should I rate Provia differently?
I have some 1998 and 2002 Velvia 50 coming soon too, how should I rate those?
I developed the sheets yesterday with my 2 weeks old Arista E-6 kit and to my disappointment, the images turned out 2 stops under-exposed.
4x5 Provia 100f by earl.dieta, on Flickrthis was recoverable but the other one unfortunately is too underexposed.
someone recommended me not to change ISO for expired slides and I had no issues developing and exposing a 220 Astia 100 (exp2002) roll the week prior.
should I rate Provia differently?
I have some 1998 and 2002 Velvia 50 coming soon too, how should I rate those?
1998 & 2002 would be RVP. If it had been frozen I might say box speed for a sheet or two and wing it. But cold stored can mean a lot of things and unless you know how it has been kept it is really impossible to be definitive. I shot some RVP a couple of years ago that was 2005 expired and had been frozen. At its ISO speed of 50 it was still gorgeous. If it had been cold stored...hard to say. Temperature, temperature cycles, cold stored the whole time? A lot of unknowns unless you've had it from day one or know who has, really. With the OP's query it was a two year window of refrigerated film, so I would have very little worry about his rolls shedding speed. Yours are up to 16 years so unless it has been in a freezer in the interim I think all bets are off sorry. But give it a try, it is the only way to find out.I hope this is not off-topic but over the weekend, I decided to shoot my first 2 4x5 Provia sheets, expired in 2008, cold stored.
I developed the sheets yesterday with my 2 weeks old Arista E-6 kit and to my disappointment, the images turned out 2 stops under-exposed.
this was recoverable but the other one unfortunately is too underexposed.
someone recommended me not to change ISO for expired slides and I had no issues developing and exposing a 220 Astia 100 (exp2002) roll the week prior.
should I rate Provia differently?
I have some 1998 and 2002 Velvia 50 coming soon too, how should I rate those?
You wouldn't want much more light hitting the snow on those hills in your sample image, so I'm not sure how underexposed that frame really was, actually, much more light and you'd lose the hills altogether.
Cheers
Brett
taemo
eat sleep shoot
Thanks for the input Brett,
all Velvias were purchased from a commercial photographer in LA, on his listing he stated that the sheets were stored in a cool dry place.
likewise the Provia were also cold stored
for that lake shot, I metered to the boat which is why I was surprised to see it come out underexposed
I also developed this at 30C instead of 39C but I'm wondering if maybe the chemicals weren't warm enough.
I'll do one more Provia and Velvia test shot to see how to meter these as otherwise I might go back to Ektar
all Velvias were purchased from a commercial photographer in LA, on his listing he stated that the sheets were stored in a cool dry place.
likewise the Provia were also cold stored
for that lake shot, I metered to the boat which is why I was surprised to see it come out underexposed
I also developed this at 30C instead of 39C but I'm wondering if maybe the chemicals weren't warm enough.
I'll do one more Provia and Velvia test shot to see how to meter these as otherwise I might go back to Ektar
sevo
Fokutorendaburando
2012 is not that expired. Velvia 50 however loses sensitivity even while it still is supposedly good, so you may want to expose it at ISO25. And if your scans are accurate, it would benefit from a CC25C or CC25G filter...
sevo
Fokutorendaburando
Don't do that, if you are wrestling with expired film - it is bad enough if you have to compensate for one variable beyond spec. I wondered why your pictures manage to have both a blue stain in the shadows and a yellow stain in the highlights at once - that might be a explanation.
De_Corday
Eternal Student
I've been shooting ten-years-expired Velvia 100F with no exposure compensation and it's been fine.
sevo
Fokutorendaburando
100F is a very well-behaved film. 50 is a diva...
De_Corday
Eternal Student
^Did not know that--only ever shot 50 fresh.
tunalegs
Pretended Artist
I find colors will shift faster than sensitivity will fade. I shot some ten year old Ektachrome and exposure was fine but the colors were faded and slightly purple. Generally I find 1 stop of extra exposure for each ten years out of date works ok if you don't have a roll to play with, but occasionally this is too much or too little compensation.
kxl
Social Documentary
Same here. I've shot expired Velvia (5 years+) and while the exposure was fine, it had a magenta shift.
edge100
Well-known
I hope this is not off-topic but over the weekend, I decided to shoot my first 2 4x5 Provia sheets, expired in 2008, cold stored.
I developed the sheets yesterday with my 2 weeks old Arista E-6 kit and to my disappointment, the images turned out 2 stops under-exposed.
this was recoverable but the other one unfortunately is too underexposed.
someone recommended me not to change ISO for expired slides and I had no issues developing and exposing a 220 Astia 100 (exp2002) roll the week prior.
should I rate Provia differently?
I have some 1998 and 2002 Velvia 50 coming soon too, how should I rate those?
That might have been me.
I've got a freezer full of Provia 100F, Velvia 50, and Ektachrome 160T that expired in 2000-2003, and I've never shot at anything except box speed, and it's all turned out perfectly.
edge100
Well-known
Yes! Are these scans calibrated to an IT8 target?
judsonzhao
Well-known
I just shot some expired in 2011, no noticeable color shift, but it's indeed bit dull. Exposure will be just fine, measure it at ISO 50.
ssmc
Well-known
Thanks for the advice guys! I feel like I'm on steadier ground now to shoot this stuff and not make a mess of it!
RFF rocks
Scott
RFF rocks
Scott