Velvia

(Almost missed my post today, shame on me!)

Lately I’ve posted a few shots taken on Velvia. Shooting low-speed slide film has been a big no for me in the past; partly because I like high-speed films and partly because I’ve previously had no access to a film scanner, and I’m not very keen on projectors. Let me share this photographic experience with you.

One of the fun things about trying out films is that each one has a reputation. Because of the reputation, when I load a roll in there’s already a mental image of what the pictures will be like, and this affects the way I take pictures.

Velvia has a particularly strong and good reputation, even to the point that photographers go into a dreamy, poetic mindset when talking about it. It’s supposed to be one of the highest resolution, lowest noise films around. The colors are supposed to be wonderfully saturated, to the point of making Velvia unsuited for portraits. The guy at my lab said the colors “pop out” at you.

High resolution noise free images is all very nice, but I was looking forward to seeing those colors. I associate “high saturation colors” with a plasticky look, where subtle tonal changes are traded off in order to get those in-your-face vibrant colors even when shooting a grey concrete wall. Because of this, I was pleasantly surprised to find that the Velvia colors are saturated in a very smooth, controlled way. I think this is because of the saturated colors being slightly dark, giving them a velvety feel (therefore the name Velvia, maybe?). I guess you could say that the darkish, saturated tones gives the images some “Velvia character.”

I was also half-expecting people to appear sunburnt in a finnish way, with disturbingly red skin tones, but for most of the shots, the skin tones are soft and pleasant. (Now that I think of it, the people in an image I posted earlier actually have a slight red cast on the skin, but that might not be the film.)

All of this goodness comes at a cost of almost 13€ per roll with development, so I’m not ready for mass-consumption yet.

What else? I’m glad that the Olympus’ light meter appears in good condition, and the 100mm lens is perhaps the most enjoyable lens I’ve ever used.