It depends on which "old Velvia" and "new Velvia" you are talking about.
The ORIGINAL Velvia had a distinct grain pattern and had a touch more
acutance to it. It also had issues with scanning. Remember "pepper grain"?
This was caused by the frosted diffusion texture added to the polyester base
to make it a little more scannable--however, this in essence created a
surface of little prisms. If the scanner's lightsource is to pinpointed or
columnated, these little prisms would refract the light away from the
scanner's sensor causing little black specs. Take the slide out, turn it
around and rescan and the specs change position. Both Velvia and Provia
suffered from this.
The base was eventually corrected, but Fuji pro slide films made prior to
the Velvia reformulation suffer pepper grain. Again, this is very scanner
dependant.
The reformulated Velvia (the old new or the new old), was much more like the
reformulated Provia. Although the specifications indicate that it was able
to resolve better than the original Velvia and the grain was greatly
diminished. However, many of us disliked the lack of acutance in the image.
The softened grain was more scanner friendly, but it just seemed to have
lost the edginess. Colors, however, remained the same--although some claim
the shadow detail increased slightly. Another issue with the reformulated
Velvia was an increase in the "mystery majentas" showing up in the skies of
high-altitude shots. (UV?)
Recently, Fuji finally got around to listening to its customers and brought
back the grain structure of the original Velvia. This was a terrific move on
their part, but unfortunately a bit too late to save the marketplace. Had
they kept this grain structure all along, it would have slowed the digital
migration for nature photographers.
An issue with Velvia is with scanning. The saturated greens that we
absolutely love about Velvia don't scan correctly. Depending on the
scanner's lightsource the greens will either turn brownish or more
typical--blue. There are specific hues that scanners can't quite get right
and Velvia Green is one of those hues. What is odd, however, is that Provia
and even Astia (as well as the non-pro equivelent versions) have less
pronounced greens on film, but will actually yield that "Velvia Green"
through the scanning process!
Colorwise, all three versions of Velvia are essentually the same. I've heard
some claim a difference in blue skies, but I tend to believe that is more a
function of micro-adjustment in exposure--even 1/4 of a stop difference will
change the hue of the sky. Maybe this is related to my mystery majentas--I
don't know.
As much as I absolutely love Velvia, I have stopped shooting it. The cost of
film and developement has driven me to negative films. The NEW Kodak Portra
films are so good that I'm not inclined to really use anything else.
(however, I am starting controlled tests between the Portras and Fuji print
films). Portra 160VC is absolutely beautiful for shooting nature. It is
such an amazing film and it scans extremely well. The NEW Portras have been
reformulated for the digitization process whereas the old formulation was
optimized for optical enlargement. The difference on my Coolscan V-ED is
night and day. I have a setting on my Olympus E-1 that gives me almost a
perfect match to Portra 160NC. One major advantage to the Kodak Portra
films is the neutral shadows. Almost all films will put some color tint
into the shadows, but Kodak has managed to keep them neutral--again a better
match to digital.
Just a side note on Fujichrome Provia. Back a couple years ago, when people
were trying to justify digital over film, the common film of comparison was
Provia. Fine and dandy, except that both Provia and the 2nd generation
Velvia suffer from lateral halation. This is the phenonomon where light
striking the film "splashes" sideways through the emulsion causing a loss in
sharpness on high contrast edges. Less contrasty edges were just fine, but
these are not what people looked at in the comparison images. Digital--even
3MP images fom the Canon D30 looked sharper than comparitive images from
full-frame 35mm Provia. Comparative images from films not suffering this
ailment were not quite so blatent--and those with a pro-digital agenda were
quick to dismiss those tests and chose to paint the canvas with the one
broad brush of "Provia is representative of all films". If these same
pundunts (Michael Richtmann of Luminous-Landscape being chief among them)
had applied the same controlled tests to various films as they did to
digital vs Provia, they would have found that Provia was NOT the best film
out there. In all honesty, the SHARPEST slide film I've ever used, other
than Kodachrome 25, were the Agfa slide films. Joel Wilcox turned me onto
these films and they were not only extremely sharp (the acutance is off the
charts), but the shadow details are there. Unfortunately, the grain
structure is kind of in-your-face and gritty enough to finish furniture.
Grain in digitized images is becomming a non-issue. A quick pass through a
noise-removal program is all it takes to match a scanned image with the
ultra-clean images from a digital-camera. It's kinda funny--if we apply the
same processing being done in-camera to the film-digitization process, the
images are awefully close. Comparative images are almost always setup to
prove that digital is better than film. But when you attempt to maximize
the quality of the film-digitization process and apply the lessons of the
21st century, the playing field is still quite level. That 30 year old OM
body with a new roll of film is still pretty competitive.
So, back to the original question--don't worry about the differences in the
Velvia formulations--the colors are the same, but the grain is slightly
different. Unless you are scanning at 4000dpi or better, you won't see any
difference between the two. You have to really know what you are looking for
to see it. You will feel it, but unless it is pointed out to you, you won't
know what the difference really is.
Ken Norton
ken@xxxxxxxxxxx
http://www.zone-10.com
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