The tally for the weekend? I shot around 135 frames of which around 30 were "keepers." Another 35 were OK but had imperfections, and the remainder were redundant or had other issues. (I recently read an article discussing how "keepers" is an amateur concept - I'm not sure what pros call them... money shots? uber images?)

link: Flowershow 2007 gallery *notes on mix of film at bottom

It was interesting to shoot the show. After shooting primarily black and white this winter and with the last big project being a wedding, this was about as far from highspeed B&W as you can get. This was long exposure, still life, high resolution, fine grain color. A lot of the black and white work helped with this shoot - the primary issues were exposure control and composition.

I asked Bill for insight into exposure compensation with macro photography and he gave me a Canon pamphlet to read. It was a brochure of Canon materials from the early 80's, but unlike modern brochures it contained a whole section of the formulas and mathematical basis for the correct exposure of macro subjects. I read it over, but decided that I didn't really have enough time to understand what I would need to do to use the information quickly in the field. I decided to go the easy route and replace the waist level finder with the meter head on the Hasselblad.

I was shooting with exposures ranging from 1/8 to 1 second (some longer), but primarily I was shooting around f8 @ 1 second. Focusing was problematic, but it wasn't just the darkness; there was slight movement being created by movement of the air and probably some degree of camera shake as I wasn't using a cable release. The best technique seemed to be pinching the shutter button applying equal pressure to both sides of the camera at once.

When I got the film back I was reminded just how good Velvia looks. I was really excited about the color that I would be getting from the Fortia, so much so that I didn't have high expectations for the Velvia. But, it came through. Even the Provia 400 looks pretty good. I used Provia to capture one set of frames that was requested by a designer because the landscape was in a dark corner of the building. It isn't as saturated, but because the original scene was so colorful, it really didn't need to be.

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Fuji Fortia

Fuji Fortia SP is a slide film that is available in Japan only. It is a limited run film, but it is fairly readily available at major camera stores. It is produced in 35mm (135 format) and 6x6cm (120 format). Marketed as a 50 ASA film, on the box it is recommended that the film be rated at ASA 64 for increased color saturation. Fuji markets Fortia as a film primarily for flowers photography, but it can be used for a lot of different scenarios. I think it is considered an "effect film," but this is caused by some interesting qualities of the color curves. What gives Fortia its distinct look is the width of its color rendition.

Overlaying the color curves of Fuji Velvia and Fortia SP, the peaks are the same, but the tonal range of each of the color layer is different. Fortia has the same peak color saturation, but the colors that it captures have a much narrower tonal width. That is what gives Fortia its distinct look - the colors that it captures are very distinct in tonality and there is not much overlap in the three colors. The colors render as being very distinct and separate.

When the film is overexposed it seems to shift yellow. The degree of yellow corresponds with the degree of over exposure. The Velvia I was shooting seemed to do the same thing, so this may be an affect of the light and not the film, but it seems to be related to the film.

The RMS of the film is 11, so it isn't as fine as Velvia, but it certainly didn't seem grainy. I shot both 120 and 35mm formats, with Zeiss and Nikon lenses. Both scanned very well and without any noticeable grain. Rated at 64 it exposed very well, and I'm not sure under what circumstances you would want to rate it ASA 50 (I think it may say on the box, but I don't remember off hand).

From what I've seen the shots of blue sky, the sky color tends toward purple. Also, when shooting red tulips the tulips would lose definition due to the extreme red saturation and limited tonal width. At the same time, it is really a great look and I think it will be a great film to have handy for select shots. There are probably some landscape scenes where this film would excel. I am very curious to see how this film would be in sunrise and sunset landscapes.

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*note: the film used was a mix of Fortia SP, Velvia 100F, and Provia 400. The majority is Fortia SP - go to the main gallery link in the navigation bar and click on the flowershow album to see the files. Files with "ve" in the name are Velvia, "fo" are fortia, and "pr" are Provia.
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exciting times; I have an abundance of Fortia film and more is on the way. I think I'll have to shoot some sunsets with it. Next up? I'm not sure, but it may be aerial photography - we'll see.