And yet ANOTHER film question.....*sigh*

[Marko]

In direct sunlight late in the day Provia can get a little orange. It is beautiful at virtually any other time of the day in natural light.

Provia is a very "reactive" emulsion, for lack of a better way of putting it. It reacts quickly to small changes in light quality, exposure, development, color temperature. It's more fine-tunable as a result, but it can get out of control very quickly if you're not careful. The best way to reign it back in is developmental control. I suspect without viewing the pictures in question that your exposure was just a bit on the minus side (maybe a 1/3) with normal development. Try a bit more exposure and a touch minus development and see if you get no joy.

Astia is more neutral and does not change with the treatment quite as quickly. Technically it's inferior to Provia (slightly larger grain, slightly less acutence...) but for my purposes and the way I shoot it, it's probably the best people film there is. Certainly for fashion. A large percentage of us who shoot fashion prefer it.

E100SW always looks saturated and golden-yellow to me. To me that just looks too cheesy and obvious, but photographers have made careers on that look. As for Velvia, most photographers say avoid people when shooting it, and in this case I agree. Skin tones get red in a hurry. I find it a good emulsion for landscape-cityscape when "pop" is desired, and I used to use it almost exclusively for table top when I used to do that sort of thing.

Portra 160NC is a pretty good emulsion as far as color neg goes, but I don't shoot that much color neg anymore. The film it replaced, VPS 160, was a better film, though a bit slower than its stated rating (quite typical for Kodak).

Very important. I feel that when shooting any chrome film, developmental control is essential, far more so than with neg and especially a BW film like Plus or Tri-X, films with a lot of latitude and very shallow toe/shoulder curves. Further, it goes without saying, of course, that these are nothing but educated opinions, and even following my advice to the letter you may find your results not matching, or not to your taste.

All the best,

Marko

[Soujrnr]

Hi Marko,

You know, to be honest, I've never played with slide film as far as changing the ISO. I may have shot a roll of Kodachrome 64 at ISO 100 by accident but never experimented to see what would happen. I think just because of the lack of latitude that chrome has, I opted not to play with over and under exposure with the ISO setting. In any event, K64 comes back wonderfully when shot at ISO 64. Perhaps I should try a few experimental rolls, shooting some E100S and SW at various ISOs close to the default.

As far as print film goes, I shoot a lot of sports teams and portraiture during the summer months and so print film is what I have to live by. I shoot almost exclusively with Portra 160 NC but I've also tried Fuji NPH and I've tried the Optima film once. I still go back to the Portra every time though. I know that most wedding photographers used to use Vericolor but I don't think it's made anymore. I could be wrong though.

I'm going to be doing some street photography next week and perhaps I'll shoot some of the Astia. I'll be shooting a wide diversity of people (black, white, Hispanic) and I'd be interested to see how it does on the skin tones.

Thanks for the info!

Good day!

Mike

[Marko]

Don't just vary the exposure, vary the development. That's where the REAL control over E6 films resides. However, the amount you want to manipulate is almost always much less than a stop. 1/4, 1/3, 1/2, sometimes less than that. Pro table top photographers I know will shoot make a number of identical exposures so that they can push or pull their 4x5 chromes in 1/6 or 1/8 increments over the range of between 1/3 and 1/2 a stop.

Make a habit of snip testing your critical work, most especially when you're testing a film (you haven't really tested a film unless you've snip tested it, you have no way of knowing exactly how it pushes and pulls). It wastes the first 5 exposures of your roll, but allows you to nail your development right on the head. Of course if you shoot a roll of varied subjects in varied light conditions it's a complete waste and would cost you 5 potential good frames.

[Soujrnr]

Marko,

Great advice. I've never snip tested any film I've used yet. Perhaps I should start. So, is the general idea to have the lab develop only the first five and then check them out and then develop the rest of the roll accordingly? Sorry for my ignorance. I've just never done this. Also, for the test, would you suggest I shoot the same subject but vary the exposure by a 1/3, 1/2, 1 stop, then -1/3, -1/2, etc?

Thanks so much for your help.

Good day!

Mike