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What film for Sunsets and Landscape
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As part of my next module in photography, OK it don’t start until Sept, I need to find a film that gives prints with vivid colours of Sunsets, water and landscapes and exposures will probably range from 1/200th to 10secs circa. I’ve heard good reports of Velvia and Superia. Can anybody advise.
Either of the two emulsions that you’ve mentioned should do the job as will a raft of others. Do you need negative or transparency film (Prints or slides)? If using negative film, bear in mind that unless you are printing yourself, you’re at the mercy of whoever prints the negatives for you and they just might take out all the saturation you tried so hard to put in!
Velvia is the job! You wont go wrong with that!
Superia is very good too but Id put my money on velvia!
For high saturation Velvia does the job.
Bear in mind however, its not to everyones taste.I use it exclusively when shooting landscapes.
However, if you haven’t shot slide film before I would recommend that you bracket your exposures.
I would also suggest that, if your camera allows it, to underexpose by about 1/3 of a stop as this helps
with vivid saturation.Rgds
Kevin
KPM wrote:
However, if you haven’t shot slide film before I would recommend that you bracket your exposures.
I would also suggest that, if your camera allows it, to underexpose by about 1/3 of a stop as this helps
with vivid saturation.Rgds
Kevin
Underexposing transparency film by 1/3 of a stop is a useful and popular technique to increase saturation and make the slides literally pop. It works quite well with most emulsions except Velvia! If you do it with Velvia, you could find yourself with blocked shadows. I used to find the best rating for Velvia would actually be to overexpose by 1/3 of a stop, rating it at ISO 40, rather than rating it at ISO 64 and underexposing it. This is particularly important if you intend to produce prints from Velvia. However, even more important is that you don’t just blindly underexpose or overexpose because someone here suggested you do so – try it out for yourself and see what you prefer. Don’t forget, you need to consider if your slides are principally for projection or for printing. I regularly tok two exposures of a scene, one for projection and one for printing as underexposed Velvia looks terrible in print!
Thorsten, you really seem to know your stuff on Velvia. I presume you’ve had a love affair with it in the past, or currently. I’ll be shooting for print only as it’s specifically for a C&G panel. Unfortunately I don’t have the option of bracketing, it’s not an option on my Minolta 7000 (should have kept my Dynax 7) but I can compensate with EV compensation.
Brian_C wrote:
Unfortunately I don’t have the option of bracketing, it’s not an option on my Minolta 7000 (should have kept my Dynax 7) but I can compensate with EV compensation.
Of course you have the option of bracketing! Just because the camera won’t do it automatically for you, doesn’t mean you can’t do it :wink: I’m not too familiar with the Minolta 7000. Does it provide a means for manual exposure? If so, then that’s the way to go. Set the first exposure correctly, then manually adjust the shutter speed or aperture up or down depending on whether you want to slightly overexpose or underexpose. Another option, if the camera allows it and you would rather not use manual mode is to simply adjust the film speed on the camera up and down, thus fooling the camera into thinking it has a different film speed and of course it will meter according to whatever film speed it sees.
Velvia and I never really got on too well. My favourite Fuji emulsions were Provia and Astia. I always found the colours of Velvia a little over the top for my liking and got far more realistic results with Provia and Astia. I found it difficult to get good prints from Velvia, regardless of what lab I used, but overexposing it by 1/3 of a stop made life easier for the labs and I did get some acceptable prints this way.
Sorry Thorsten, that’s what I implied. Although I don’t have automatic bracketing I can still over/underexpose using the EV compensation or as you say manual mode. Anyway, thanks for your feedback it’s been very good. I’ll get my hands on some Velvia. I suppose the best way to find out is to fire off a couple of rolls, over/under and correctly exposed shots, take notes on exposure and compare the results.
Brian_C wrote:
I suppose the best way to find out is to fire off a couple of rolls, over/under and correctly exposed shots, take notes on exposure and compare the results.
Yep, spot on. On the basis that you’re already thinking of taking that approach, I’d say you’ll have no problems at all. Too many people take the advice of others literally and run with it without trying things out themselves and they can end up being very disappointed. Can’t see that happening here though :)
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