I've been slaving over my computer today catching up on the
book-keeping and also scanning some photos that includes tons of
Velvia. I've been a Velvia shooter since the day it became
available in the USA. I love Velvia and find that there are no
other films like it. Velvia is to photography what garlic is to
cooking.
Why shoot ANY film at anything other than the rated speed?
Usually it's because of the inaccuracies of our meters, lenses
and shutters more than any possible variance in film. I've
never encountered speed variances in film stock. It's been
rumoured to have happened, but I believe that the film
manufacturers have sufficiently controlled manufacturing to
produce films within 100f rated speed.
How about personal preferences and shooting styles? Yup.
That's a critical reason to vary the film rating. But before
going off half-cocked and automatically rating something
different, you need to have specific reason to do so--reasons
that can be expressed in a coherent manner. To say that <insert
manufacturer here> is all wet in their film ratings is pretty
lame. I'll put the scientists at Fuji or Kodak up against you
any day.
Ok, end of rant. Now for the hows and whys behind MY film
ratings of Velvia:
Direct sunlight with hard shadows may call for a slight increase
in exposure. 1/2 stop is a hair too much, but 1/3 (ISO 40)
seems pretty close. This opens the shadows up with just a
minimal loss in saturation and only slightly sacrifices the
highlights. Velvia is a high-contrast film and when used in
high-contrast lighting it leaves little room for error. The
tonal scale will shift upwards slightly, but unless highlights
are being blown away, there is little harm done.
Flat lighting, overcast skies, pre/post sunset times and anytime
where the contrast is not so extreme calls for Velvia to be shot
right at ISO 50. In fact, there are times where shooting it
-1/3 is even desirable. It isn't uncommon for landscape
photographers to shoot it -1/3 WITH a polorizer and gradient
filter. Granted, the exposures are getting pretty slow, but
it's quite a valid technique to pull colors out of seemingly
drab scenes.
It is true that Velvia is harder to scan well. About the only
thing I've found that works is to override every auto setting in
Vuescan and not let it try to correct anything. Otherwise you
end up with a stepped tonal scale and lame greens. Most any
other type of transparency film will scan easier. Rating Velvia
at 40 is a means to create an easier to scan transparency, but
why not just shoot some other film? If you like shadow detail,
there is no better slide film than Agfa RSX II-50.
AG-Schnozz
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