Fuji Velvia 50 35mm. Need some tips and help.

warheit12 · Feb 11, 2012

I am completely new to this forum and I just do photography as a hobby. I am not the best at it but I enjoy it.

Basically I have a very basic old SLR Canon TX. Max shutter speed of 1/500. slowest is 1 second but I can hold down the button as long as I want as well. 3 lens I have the standard 50mm f1.8 I also have a canon 85 mm f1.8 and finally I have a Rokinon 70-180mm f4.5.

I wanted to no before I load up this film into the camera. could you guys make any suggestions. I have never worked with 50 iso, so I am kind of worried I am going to screw up every single image because I wouldnt understand the settings. should i get a light meter before shooting this film?

Thank you all in advance for any help you could give me =)

Rephargotohp · Feb 11, 2012

I've shot a ton of Velvia 50...when I shot film.

Great outdoor film. Not something you will use for handholding indooors or sports shots. But doing an outdoor (landscape) shot at ISO50 really isn't a problem. Use a tripod if you want to have a deep DOF at a tight aperture. But you have some fast lenses so if you were shooting some detail things outdoors, you certain could get some shuuter speeds fast enough to hand hold.

Your camera already has a center weighted mneter built bin so use it, unless of course it is broken. Then you could get an inexpensive incident light meter to use.

Have fiun, colloras on that film are beautiful...well at least I thought so

warheit12 · Feb 11, 2012

Thank you for the reply.

So quick question though. lets say there are absolutly no clouds sunny day. at iso 50 can I get good shots shooting at f1.8? I never really get to shoot at f1.8 and thats why i kind of wanted a low iso film. so would a good shutter speed be about 125-250 at that f stop?

Rephargotohp · Feb 11, 2012

Bright sunny day = EV15

Shooting ISO 50 @ f/1.8 would require a shutter speed of 1/5000 which is beyond what your camera is capable of.

working it backwards with ISO50 and max shutter speed of that camera (1/500) the minimum aperture you could shoot at in those conditions is about f/5.6

Shooting at wide open is highly overated but it becomes the mantra of many, even if they can't get 2 eyes in focus at the same time. You could get a 3 stop ND filter if you really wanted to do that on a sunny day

warheit12 · Feb 11, 2012

Alright so I guess if I wanted to shoot wide open I would have to have signifcant less light. Well that works, I think I will basically go out and shoot and see how they turn out. Thank you for the help.

michaeljamesphoto · Feb 24, 2012

Please don't shoot Velvia (or any other reversal film) without a meter. It would likely just be a waste, considering the small exposure latitude of the film. Basically it's not near as forgiving on exposure as print films. It's too expensive and beautiful to waste without a meter

dxqcanada · Feb 24, 2012

Looking over your questions/answers ... I have to ask if you know how to use your camera, and it's internal light meter ?
Have you shot film before using this camera or any SLR ?

If you do not know how to use the tools ... you should try to understand the basic usage ... if you do not then you probably will not understand our answers.

http://www.cameramanuals.org/canon_pdf/canon_tx.pdf

djacobox372 · Feb 24, 2012

Unlike negative film, it's best to slightly underexpose slide film so that you don't completely blow out your highlights. I typically shoot velvia 50 at iso 80.

Sw1tchFX · Feb 24, 2012

If you want to shoot at f/1.8 during the daylight than just do it. Color negative film has so much latitude it's ridiculous. Just because it says ISO 100 film, it doesn't mean you have to shoot it at ISO 100. I shoot ALL my color neg at half box speed and it comes out beautiful. Take a look at my blog, the vast majority of it is shot with color negative film way overexposed.

Seriously, this is where film is 100x better than digital, exposure doesn't need to be perfect. overexpose a stop..whatever, overexpose 3 stops...you can barely tell.

If you don't believe me, take a look at Jonathan Canlas's book Film is Not Dead. He has an example of Portra 400 over 8 stops, and there is no difference between the normal exposure and 4 stops over. They look identical.

dxqcanada · Feb 24, 2012

Is the match needle meter in your Canon TX not working ?
I had noticed you had posted before about getting/building a light meter.

If the problem is obtaining a battery ... Wein Cell MRB625 replacement for PX625, MR-9, S625PX

BlackSheep · Feb 24, 2012

Sw1tchFX said:
If you want to shoot at f/1.8 during the daylight than just do it. Color negative film has so much latitude it's ridiculous. Just because it says ISO 100 film, it doesn't mean you have to shoot it at ISO 100. I shoot ALL my color neg at half box speed and it comes out beautiful. Take a look at my blog, the vast majority of it is shot with color negative film way overexposed.

Seriously, this is where film is 100x better than digital, exposure doesn't need to be perfect. overexpose a stop..whatever, overexpose 3 stops...you can barely tell.

If you don't believe me, take a look at Jonathan Canlas's book Film is Not Dead. He has an example of Portra 400 over 8 stops, and there is no difference between the normal exposure and 4 stops over. They look identical.

Switch, I think you misread the OP - Velvia is slide film.

Sw1tchFX · Feb 25, 2012

BlackSheep said:
Sw1tchFX said:

If you want to shoot at f/1.8 during the daylight than just do it. Color negative film has so much latitude it's ridiculous. Just because it says ISO 100 film, it doesn't mean you have to shoot it at ISO 100. I shoot ALL my color neg at half box speed and it comes out beautiful. Take a look at my blog, the vast majority of it is shot with color negative film way overexposed.

Seriously, this is where film is 100x better than digital, exposure doesn't need to be perfect. overexpose a stop..whatever, overexpose 3 stops...you can barely tell.

If you don't believe me, take a look at Jonathan Canlas's book Film is Not Dead. He has an example of Portra 400 over 8 stops, and there is no difference between the normal exposure and 4 stops over. They look identical.

Click to expand...

Switch, I think you misread the OP - Velvia is slide film.

I agree with Velvia being slide film, but that's not what I posted about. And from what the OP wrote, they purchased Velvia 50 for the lower ISO when they could have just shot whatever CN film at a lower ISO and just went with it. With CN film, it takes alot of overexposure to either ruin it or make it unusable.