RVP100

Preface/disclaimer: I have almost no experience with slide/positive film. I work almost exclusively in reversal/negative film, whether in black and white or color. Exposing slides is hard; I'm not very good at it. When done correctly, it's rewarding, so don't let my assessment below dissuade you if you're inclined to try it.

This was a roll of 6x6 positives I shot: Fuji's 'new Velvia,' RVP100. A new take on a legendary super-saturated emulsion, at least it was supposed to be. I found it unforgiving. Almost half the roll was unusably bad. I blame my own inexperience with handling slide film, as well as using a spotmeter. (That 35mm roll came out fine, for instance.) If the item you meter isn't of known reflectance (ideally somewhere around 18% grey) then your reading is more or less useless. A scene meter is much, much more useful in slide photography, unless you like your skies being somewhere between cyan and yellow-brown. Highlights on slide film vanish. If you think digital is bad, that's nothing to this. If you manage to expose perfectly, color is perfect, fantastic, no Photoshop necessary, and you can look at it on a light table. If you're me though, you won't and you'll be left with a mess. And you'll spend a long time removing a purple cast from everything. Velvia is a very purple film. For sunsets? Great. For scenes with dark skies and cloudy days? Fantastic. For people who are very, very disciplined about metering? Perfect. For anyone used to negative film or looking for a decided latitude advantage over digital? Waste of time and money. Slides in general, not just Velvia. Though it's nice if you're going for the messed-up-color look of vintage photography, or that Lomo nonsense, or are into the cross-processing scene.

Fuji RVP100 - minus the ones that were simply too bad to post

As evidenced by the text on the building, Clemons Library and a statue of Ikarus. I changed the sky hue to make it less cyan and pulled some purple out of everything. Notice that the highlights on the statue and patio which should be grey are instead cyan.

Decent color on the tree, bad color on the sky.

Architecture School.

Ugh, this is almost here as a lesson on scenes that slide film handles poorly, and how to mis-expose them.

Looking up the hill to the Math department and Clark Hall.

The color on the tree (at least on the left) is fantastic, pretty much perfect. I wanted to crop all the sky out it came out so badly, but left almost all of it in for the sake of composition. The image is overexposed; I likely was metering for the tree, and if you're shooting slides you should not meter or expose for shadows.

Looking up at Alderman Library.

Ironically this came out well, though the film was daylight film (of course the light shining through the window is daylight) and the tungsten lights give a nice warm glow. Daylight slide film is unsuitable for use indoors (generally) without a filter, whereas negative film has enough latitude that it's not usually an issue to use it for either.

Inside the Chapel at UVa.

I think I de-cyaned the sky and lightened (and maybe de-purpled) the ground. You can pull some shadow detail out of slides (though not much) but no highlight detail. Notice that the sky is bluer and less cyan in the vignetted corners of the image. This suggests to me that the film is shifting color where it is overexposed (perils of color film).

Looking west, adjacent to Newcomb Hall.

There's that wall again; it needed to be de-purpled. You can see where I tried and recover highlight detail but only got off-white because the film there was essentially clear.

This shot came out fantastic. Thankfully there's usually one shot on a roll that makes the whole thing worthwhile. I desaturated (and de-purpled) the sidewalk and building (Minor Hall). Lesson learned: do not include the sky when shooting slides.