Customer Reviews

Fujifilm Fujichrome Velvia 50 Color Slide Film ISO 50, 120mm, 5 Roll Pro Pack

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No grain in a 70 MP scan, super saturated vivid colors that will burn your eyes out, great highlight and shadow detail. Actually, not much different than Velvia 100. Just lets you open lens 1 stop more for less depth-of-field.

Velvia is a luxury that can be had for less than $10 a roll, if you shoot this film next time you are out in nature shooting landscapes and scenery, you'll be blown away by the quality of your photography.

Very saturated, so it's not a good choice for people's faces. Digital doesn't come close to this.

Amazon and Adorama combination is great. Order received very timely. Fuji 50 is great, and Fuji RVP 100 is greater.

velvia 50 is the best landscape film available. have been using it for 25 years. my only regret is not being able to get it in 220 length. if you are shooting in the cold, changing film so often is sometimes impossible with stiff fingers. even in june it gets cold before the sunrise at altitude. i've not had to use 120 in 23 years. isn't this a pro film? 120 wastes time.

I wanted to try film again, in part to see for myself if by using film, especially medium format film, I could avoid chasing after ever-changing digital technology. The camera is a restored beautiful silver with red bellows 6X9 Agfa from the late '50s.

The Velvia was developed and scanned at a lab, with the results sent back on a disk, along with the strips of developed slides.

My procedure is to import into iPhoto and then do any manipulation in iPhoto or Elements, and PTLens for perspective control if necessary. What I found is that while iPhoto is fine for my modest digital files and scanned 35mm film, it fell far short handling the very large files resulting from scanning 120 film. I thought the scans were faulty until I ran them through Elements. There they sprang to life and are very nice. I certainly recommend using Elements, Photoshop and probably Aperture or Lightroom to deal with these huge image files. And you will need something reasonably modern and fast for a computer.

We viewed them on a 42" plasma via AppleTV and really I have no complaints with the quality of these scanned slides at all. Velvia 50 is a slow, fine-grained film, but it doesn't seem to be too touchy on the exposure. The only problem was with some ocean shots with bright white breaking waves and dark rocks. That wide range of exposures is tough for any film or digital and the Velvia pretty much washed out the white in this case. Scenics and architectural shots were very nice and properly exposed. I have a light meter, but have had really good luck using the "sunny 16" rule.

Is it worth the cost and hassle to use film in this digital age? Test after test shows that digital out-resolves film. 35mm film, for example, supposedly has 25-40 MPs of information, but it sure doesn't show. Even a 6 MP digital is clearly sharper. Now, if you spend $75 per shot for high-end drum scans it gets better, but really... And tests over and over show that any medium or higher range digital cameral will easily out-resolve even medium format film unless one springs for a drum scan.

You can't expect film to be a technically better medium. It just isn't.

So, why bother with film? It does give a different and pleasing "look". Even my son, not interested in photography at all, spotted the film shots on the big screen every time. He liked the film look and so do I. There are other reasons to consider film. The great old high-end film cameras that you could never afford...now you can! The lenses are affordable, too, so you can get into a nice form of photography cheap, a few hundred instead of thousands of digital dollars that lose their value like a bad car.

I suppose it is possible that someone will come up with some sort of super film that is superior to digital and that would make your investment in an old camera really worthwhile.

The cost of mailing off film for developing and scanning is not exactly cheap, but compared to chasing after equipment it is relatively affordable. How about just getting your own scanner? The one at the lab is vastly better than what most of us could ever afford and believe me, you need every bit of that quality if you are going to be happy with your photos. And, how much time do you have to screw around with unintuitive scanner software that everyone complains about?

Years from now, where will our digital files be? There will be no hard drives, no devices that we are staring at right now. Huge amounts of digital information will not be retrievable by people in the future. A box of slides and photos will always be there and future technology will probably allow for much better scans at a lower price.

Velvia 50 is great film. Be aware that it is designed for bright, saturated photos that pop, not for portraiture (although post-production software can modify this). The vivid colors are perfect for scenic and architectural photography. It exposes properly within reasonable limits and there are labs that are equipped to develop and scan it. You see no grain unless you really blow it up. Be aware that ISO 50 film is slow. You need to shoot in bright light or on a tripod if you stop it down for depth of field.

Film requires commitment and some cash. It is not superior to digital, not really even close technically speaking, but it is yet another medium really and worth considering if you are willing to make the effort. If you want to be able to shoot stopped down in darker environments, and don't want to use a tripod, you might be better off with something like Fiji 400.

Well, you might ask, can you avoid chasing after digital by using film? No, not for me. I have the cameral and I will always have some Fuji 50 around and use it for photos that I think will benefit from it, but the advantages of digital are huge and I don't see switching back from that.