I'm loving Velvia's colours

[little laker]

I just had my first ever roll of Velvia processed, and I must say that I love the colours that I'm getting.

Although a friend of mine doesn't like the narrow DOF with this photo it's pretty much the effect I was hoping for.


This one is just a low res scan, from my flatbed scanner. 1/2 the photographs on my Hi Res disk were corrupt


The only thing I don't like about Velvia is the price for processing.
We can't process slide film in the lab where I work, so I took this to our competition... whom sent it out to some company in Vancouver.
My cost for developing, a high res scan, and one set of 4x6" prints was around $75.00 Canadian... taxes in
The really scary part is I was given a considerable discount "thanks guys"

I will be shooting more slide film, however I won't be letting them do my scans again, and I'll be doing the prints myself as well.
I might just look for a more affordable lab as well.

I do admit, they did a nice job, however our prints are as good.

[Frank Fletcher]

Ah Velvia. Nothing beats the sharpness, super high contrast and of course, that deep saturation ... until you want to push it to anything > than asa 100 or you want to shoot the odd portrait or the sun happens to shine on your subject ...

I loved that film. I also shot way more Provia than Velvia by like 2 to 1.

Velvia was like a one trick pony - for that exact situation when you want the contrast and color, it really was the best. Any other time and it was substandard.

I never got my slides printed at development. I'd get it developed but scan it myself. Developing the slides might have costed $12 at most. Though, if I really wanted to scan, I'd shoot negative film. The contrast curve is just too harsh with slides.

[palindrom]

little laker,
I know that original hot 6-bath Fuji process sounds hard to do on Your own, but it's possible to do at home. Well, if You didn't work in darkroom before it would be better to play with BW process which can be made in room temperature just to get some experience. Fuji and Tetenal (which I recommend) also sell hot (38*C) 3-bath E-6 process, results aren't noticeably worse than Fuji 6-bath E-6.
The feeling when You pull out film from devel. can with getting slides done from photo lab can't be compared.

[Jimfear]

Yes Velvia! Another one converted. It really is amazing, shoot about half my shots on Velvia and it never disapoints me.

I like both your shots. Second one is really nice!

How much was really for the developing in that 75$ and how much was scanning printing etc.

[little laker]

Originally Posted by Frank Fletcher

Ah Velvia. Nothing beats the sharpness, super high contrast and of course, that deep saturation ... until you want to push it to anything > than asa 100 or you want to shoot the odd portrait or the sun happens to shine on your subject ...

I loved that film. I also shot way more Provia than Velvia by like 2 to 1.

Velvia was like a one trick pony - for that exact situation when you want the contrast and color, it really was the best. Any other time and it was substandard.

I never got my slides printed at development. I'd get it developed but scan it myself. Developing the slides might have costed $12 at most. Though, if I really wanted to scan, I'd shoot negative film. The contrast curve is just too harsh with slides.

Thanks Frank,
I guess that I haven't been playing with film for long, however I'm having fun with the process.
There isn't any Provia in available this town at the moment, however I think I'll be trying it sometime soon.
Although most people say Digital is the way to go it's tough keeping good film in stock here.

Originally Posted by palindrom

little laker,
I know that original hot 6-bath Fuji process sounds hard to do on Your own, but it's possible to do at home. Well, if You didn't work in darkroom before it would be better to play with BW process which can be made in room temperature just to get some experience. Fuji and Tetenal (which I recommend) also sell hot (38*C) 3-bath E-6 process, results aren't noticeably worse than Fuji 6-bath E-6.
The feeling when You pull out film from devel. can with getting slides done from photo lab can't be compared.

Thanks Marcin,
I think I'll give processing my own a shot soon.

I just found a not bad site on processing E6 film. Although my experience with B&W is very limited it doesn't sound all that hard. So I'll order in the materials after my bank account recovers (it's tough living on an artists salary, even with a part time job working in a photo lab)

Originally Posted by Jimfear

Yes Velvia! Another one converted. It really is amazing, shoot about half my shots on Velvia and it never disapoints me.

I like both your shots. Second one is really nice!

How much was really for the developing in that 75$ and how much was scanning printing etc.

Thanks Jim,
I'm just going from memory here, since I left the receipt at the store, when asking them to re-scan the disk.

The cost of the actual developing was around $9.00 Canadian, which I felt was more than reasonable.
The cost of every print was $0.49, which I again felt was reasonable.
However the cost of the Hi-Res scan was $33.00, which I feel was way too high.
To top that off they charged an additional $2.50 for the disk, which I felt was a slap on the face.
I didn't have them cut, or mounted.
The rest was all taxes

At the lab I work at, if you dropped off your negative film for a 3 day service you'd be paying around $7.00 Canadian for developing, including the one set.
Plus $13.00 for the high res scan, disk included.
You can believe that we're making money at that

Their high res scans are larger, 6305 x 4181 JPG vs our 3360 x 2240 TIFF.
However I'm wondering if there's much (or any) quality difference, after I up-size our TIFF files to match.
I'll find out in a week or so. After I get the film back I plan on doing a High Res scan, and doing a side to side comparison.

[gofour3]

Originally Posted by little laker

I just had my first ever roll of Velvia processed, and I must say that I love the colours that I'm getting.

Although a friend of mine doesn't like the narrow DOF with this photo it's pretty much the effect I was hoping for.


This one is just a low res scan, from my flatbed scanner. 1/2 the photographs on my Hi Res disk were corrupt

The only thing I don't like about Velvia is the price for processing.
We can't process slide film in the lab where I work, so I took this to our competition... whom sent it out to some company in Vancouver.
My cost for developing, a high res scan, and one set of 4x6" prints was around $75.00 Canadian... taxes in
The really scary part is I was given a considerable discount "thanks guys"

I will be shooting more slide film, however I won't be letting them do my scans again, and I'll be doing the prints myself as well.
I might just look for a more affordable lab as well.

I do admit, they did a nice job, however our prints are as good.

Yes good choice in slide film, I started using Velvia 100 a few months back. I thought I’d try something different, as I’ve been a long time Kodak shooter. The 50 ASA is also very good, but a tad bit slow for some shooting conditions.

I use “The Lab” in Vancouver for buying the film and processing. For $19.32CDN you get the roll of 36 exposures and this includes processing, mounting & all taxes.

Phil.