When I first dove into film photography some 10 years ago I started with a Mamiya 645 1000S and a couple of lenses. I had a preference for transparency films mostly due to my inability to get decent color reproduction/correction from scans of color negative film. This was coupled with my ignorance of challenges of exposing transparency films as they have such a limited dynamic range. I also tried a number of different films to see what liked. Little did I know at the time that many of these would cease be be available a few years later. Examples are venerable Ektachrome and Fuji Astia.
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| Fuji Astia 100 |
Recently I found a photographer on eBay selling his frozen stocks of old film.With Fuji films so expensive now at £150 for a box 20 sheets of Velvia 100 4x5 I decided to give it a try. Properly stored film should be good for quite a long time. I picked up 10 sheets of Kodak Ektachrome 100VS and 100 sheets of Fuji Astia. (Update:
Here are the results...)
Before I pulled the trigger on bidding I went back at looked at my old photos taken with Astia. I found that I generally liked the look of the film. I also know that I wasn’t as good at getting good color reproduction from scans of that time so I believe I could get better results now. Lastly it does help having cheap film to learn and experiment with. Below is an example of expired Portra 400 I have used to gain more experience on large format without paying full whack.
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| Expired Porta Album |
So while I wait for the film to ship I decided to do a kind of retrospective. Part of this was to read what people had written about Astia. First let’s see how Fuji marketed the film.
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| Fuji Marketing for Astia |
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| Astia Characteristics |
Reading reviews and it is easy to find negative comments with favorable comments relegating it to portraiture. The warning signs for me is subdued color palette which I tend not to favor.
Alex Burke has an excellent review of films types and he was able to praise it.
“ This film has a bit of an odd warm, yellowish color cast in most cases that isn't always flattering for landscapes, though I have seen some photographers make outstanding photographs of river scenes with it.”
Here is his example photo...
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| Alex Burke photo on Astia 100 |
Shoot Tokyo has some nice images and things to say.
Oleg Novikov does not like the film at all.
Michael E Gordon has some film comparison and recommendations on Astia
Runacres: also nice images and positive comments.
OnLandscape: Always a great read, massive comparison of lots of film types. Note this links to part 3. More in earlier issues 9 and 5.
Color and Colour...
One thing that is always true of experience with any color film in a hybrid film/digital workflow is one's opinion can be massively swayed by success and ability in getting consistent color reproduction/intent. As mentioned above this swayed me towards Velvia as there was a simple process for me to scan to decent image. When Ektar came out I hated it. I could never workout how to get good color. Now I use ColorPerfect and have more experience; I feel more comfortable with a wider range of color films.
One advantage of the analog/digital hybrid workflow is that it is possible to boost saturation. Indeed when Kodak consolidated their Portra film lineup they removed the VC (Vivid Color) version on this same basis.
My Past Examples
Here are a range of my modest images. All are Astia shot on medium format film (mostly Mamiya 645). I selected the better examples and tried to show a range of color in scenes to convince about the versatility of the film.
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| Church |
This first photo I think shows good warm color in the stone, the grass and sky are natural as well. There is a pinkish tinge in the sky highlights and the stone but I show how it can be fixed below.
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| Winter on a Car Park |
This one I was always pleased with. The exposure shooting into the sun is risky. I like the lines on the snow formed by the shadows and tire tracks. The warmth of the low sun is coupled with the blue of the sky and shadows in the sun. I cannot fault the color of this scene at all. From my files it looks to be minimally processed from the original scan.
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| Barford Bridge |
This red brick bridge in low winter sun shows great warmth of color and reflects what I was trying to capture. The sky was over-exposed which is a common casualty of transparency films with limited dynamic range. An ND gradient filter would have probably been warranted. However the reflection of the sky in the water under the bridge show some blues alongside the reds, yellows, and oranges. This had the color saturation turned up from the original scan.
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| Bath Abbey (Zeiss-Nettar 6x9) |
This night photo of Bath Abbey shows the versatility of Astia. This was taken with a Zeiss-Nettar 6x9 camera from the 1930s. Consulting the data-sheet on reciprocity failure shows exposures up to a full minute with no compensation. This photo is testimony to this capability because I had no understanding of correcting for reciprocity when I took this photo. There appears to be no processing done from the original scan.
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| Taormina Sicily |
This photo from Taormina in Sicily seems perfect in its color rendition. The exposure is good which helps and the blue is almost Velvia in intensity.
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| Cambridgeshire Rape Fields |
This spring scene with strong colors and a great range of light. Again the colors are clean and well separated. This a tight crop from the original image. This had saturation done in post-processing.
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| Austria Church (Yashica MAT124G) |
This church in overcast light shows the subdued palette. The original scan looks under-exposed but cleaned up nicely in levels.
Looking at Original Colors and Processing
Some of the examples above had some processing done and the most obvious versions I have presented below as before/after split images.
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| Right is Original Image and Left Reprocessed |
This first split image shows the original image I adjusted from the scan on the right. It looks good but has a pinkish cast. On the left I used ColorPerfect to adjust the image. I also added 20% saturation.
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| Right is Original Image and Left Reprocessed |
In this I compare the original scan on the right to what I had adjusted in Photoshop Elements on the left. I clearly added saturation.
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| The inset of the cropped and finished image. |
This photo was tightly cropped so I show the processed version over the entire original scan. Saturation and contrast were enhanced.
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| Original scan on right, processed on the left. |
This feels like it was underexposed looking at the scan. Never-the-less the image was recovered nicely. Here the subtle color palette of Astia is seen.
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