5 First Frames and Developing of Fuji Velvia 100

Two thoughts come to my mind as I try to start to write these words. The first is that when ever I share something here on 35mmc (4 times so far) it was kind of a closure of that specific topic I wrote about. The last topic was about color negatives and I kind of closed my hassle with that medium by starting to shoot slide film.

My second thought was that I would have loved to take part in the series of Bob Janes “One Third Keepers” but as I shot this Roll of Velvia in my SeidlerME Square shooting camera – one third of 54 frames would have been to much. Or in other words, on the one hand, I didn’t get 18 keepers, and on the other hand I actually kept 27 frames on my hard drive… which expresses my joy and excitement, I think.

So here are a few words and five frames with the spirit of a new world that I started to explore.

As you might recognise in the featured image I decided to use a 6 bath kit (Jobo). I kept my simple setup, like with C41, to use glass bottles that are warmed up in the kitchen sink to about 39 – 40 degrees celsius. One after the other is processed kind of relaxed in a standard developing tank with the first developer and the color developer kept on temperature in a pot of warm water, because they are told to be critical in timing. This roll of Velvia is the 3rd film I developed in the first 6 x half liters of chemicals. The kit contains 2.5 liter of every bath. The process takes 45 minutes and 60 minutes when a new set of chemicals have to be mixed. Of course I have no idea yet what differences are to be expected caused by the aging of this stuff. But so far everything worked fine. It rminds me of this story but it worked out easier for me.

I had been exited and kind of panicked when I first saw the roll of film coming out of my tank positive. In a way it looked defective at the first moment. Only when I took a little battery lamp, with a real halogen bulb in it, to light through the drying film, I started to see the beauty in there. Later, on my DSLR scanning device I was searching for the right color of light (RGB+WhiteCRI95) to backlight the slides. My Nikon D850 weakens a little getting the right white point and exposure in some scenes. But as you can always take a look on the analogue original, this is not more than a technical question. Please tell me your recommendation for the right white balance setting in this application if you are experienced in this topic.

What I love about this “positive” medium is that it shows me it’s true face right from the first moment. And I find so far it does it in a aesthetic way. That does not mean that I like every frame’s color palette, but every second or third picture I see something new, that is not within my expectations, and this helps me a little bit to leave my usual path and expand the visual experience.

On this beautiful day it had not been manifest, that it would have been the last day of summer for me in this year, but I got these colorful slides that kind of save the warm feeling. I hope I can continue getting some good results from slide film during winter!

See some of my photos here

Thanks for reading!

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