FUJICHROME VELVIA - 21 YEARS IN FOIL
A while ago my friend gave me her late father's old cameras and lenses. In the camera bag pocket were two rolls of expired Fuji Velvia 50. The boxes were covered in mildew. However, Fuji sealed their Velvia in thick foil wrappers and so even though they were 21 years out of date and been stored in the loft space above a garage, through many hot summers and cold winters, I figured it was worth shooting just to see what I got.
Velvia is a highly saturated daylight colour reversal film that's popular with nature and landscape photographers, both of which I'm not. But I do like portraiture so after shooting Izzy with some Kodak Portra 160, I thought why not try that old Velvia? she's got beautiful red hair and the meadow we were in was sort of a landscape!
The transparencies were a real surprise to me, they were so punchy and vivid, but in hindsight, that is to be expected from Fuji famous film. What I didn't expect is the beauty and robustness that emerged from such old and uncared for film. They did have a colour shift toward magenta, possibly due to age, that was reasonably corrected with post-processing. The overall final result suited my unorthodox experiment... using Velvia for portraits!
