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Comment by otterpro | Hacker News Reader

In the early 90's, when we were all using film cameras, everyone I knew, at least those who were pro or serious amateur/prosumers, used the legendary Fujifilm's Fujichrome Velvia 50 film. It became an instant hit because of its sharpness (fine grain) and color saturation that made us say "wow". It's hard to imagine what that's like, but think of it as having higher megapixels and better dynamics and great color. We used it especially for portrait/fashion and wildlife/nature. When it came out, a lot of us stopped using the classic Kodachrome/Ektachrome.

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> used the legendary Fujifilm's Fujichrome Velvia 50 film

Velvia was the reason I found a Fuji developer studio in the first place - all cameras would take 35mm, but find a location which would develop it was a challenge of its own.

I'm not a big film photo geek (probably under 100 rolls over a decade), but once you found someone who could push/pull develop your colour film, that makes the choice of film sticky.

Came for the contrasts, stayed for the contrast fix-ups - once I found a place which did Velvia 50 & Ilford 50, that's all I bought.

That's one view. I honestly never understood the attraction of Velvia 50. I know it was beloved of people who were better photographers than I.But I'd use Kodachrome 25 (which had a similar effective film speed) any day.The greens and blues of Velvia always seemed fake.

In any case, both of those were niche films for pros and a few prosumers.

Velvia makes people look far too red in the face.

You should use Provia for portraits, not Velvia. Velvia, as you note, has a strong magenta cast.

My, and most photographers I knew, reason for choosing Velvia was that you could develop it yourself. Kodachrome could only be developed by Kodak, but from what I've read about it, it was far superior in every other technical aspect. But not being able to control the push/pull of the development process really limited creative control over the whole process and was a more severe limitation than the higher resolution and color depth that Kodachrome provided.

The way I saw it, Kodachrome was more for consumers who just wanted to press a button and have it done. And Fujichrome was for people who took the process much more serious. Because they could do more with the "inferior" product than relying on the one-size-fits-all commercial process.

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