RVP50 - the Velvia fascination

If I had to choose my favorite black&white film I would really have a hard time, because there are so many near-favorites I can think of...^(*) For the choice of my favorite color slide film, on the other hand, the answer would be almost immediate and an easy single word: Velvia.

Velvia is the contraction of the words "Velvet Media", a reference to the image smoothness this film made by Fuji renders. The original Fujichrome Velvia was introduced in 1990 and was quickly adopted as a favorite color slide film by many photographers until production ceased in 2005. The outcry of the photographic community around the world was so loud that Fuji was forced to host a Velvia comeback in 2007, featuring a new film base but retaining the look of the classic film.


(Hapo 66-E, Fujichrome Velvia 50, ISO 50/18°)
One of the most celebrated features of this film is its almost unbelievable sharpness. The richness of detail on Velvia frames never ceases to strike and amaze me, especially when combined with a very sharp lens, like the one on my Hapo 66-E. Velvia is able to resolve 160 lines per mm, which allows for really huge prints without loss of detail. Projecting a medium format Velvia frame onto a wall must be something truly incredible...


(Flexaret VI, Fujichrome Velvia 50, ISO 50/18°)
But the feature that strikes the most when looking at a Velvia picture is the high color saturation: a blue sky is deep blue, meadows are extra green and flowers are so vivid in color that they even seem unreal. This is no coincidence, since the engineers at Fuji designed a film on which the pictures of the last holiday looked even better than it really looked. Velvia makes everything look more intense, more vibrant. ^(**)


(Hapo 66-E, Fujichrome Velvia 50, ISO 50/18°)
The classic Velvia is an ISO 50 film, which might make it a little too slow for low light situations or overcast skies, but it is perfect for bright sunny days, when also the extra push in color saturation provides the most spectacular results. The code name for Velvia is RVP, which stands for Reversal/Velvia/Professional. The old Velvia was just RVP, the newly introduced is RVP50.


(Flexaret VI, Fujichrome Velvia 50, ISO 50/18°)
It was when I first starting using Velvia that I understood something important about image processing. At first, one might have the feeling that film is the purest form of photography, because there is no image processing going on, no change in colors, no double layers in Gimp, no color correction in Lightroom... But, in fact, almost all this clever tricks that we can apply digitally did not come to the world in bright and clean rooms in San José in the early 90s, but originated from a long darkroom tradition that started more than a century ago. A film, as a medium designed for holding an image, must transform it in some way, and presents it to the viewer not as it was in the reality, but as the designers of that medium decided it should be. This is what happens with Velvia, but also with each and every film that ever existed, and exactly the same thing that happens in Gimp, Photoshop or Lightroom. When doing it digitally, we just have more control over it. But the transformation happens so or so.

There is nothing new under the sun. But, thank goodness, we have RVP50 to photograph it.

Pictures taken on Velvia 50 in my flickr photostream
^(*) for example, Kodak Tri-X 400, Rollei Retro 80S, Ilford Pan F Pus 50, Efke 25, Ilford HP5 Plus 400, just to mention a few...
^(**) these highly saturated colors, though, are not suitable for portraits, since they tend to give a red cast to skin.

Turn around [stranger 13/99]

(Retinette IA, Kodak Elite Chrome Extra Color 100, ISO 100/21°)
My thirteenth stranger turned around to the camera hanging from my neck just an instant before the self-timer fired the shutter.

At the market [stranger 12/99]

(EOS 40D, EF 24mm f/2.8, 1/200, f/11, ISO 400)
My twelfth stranger had just bought a plant at the Saturday market.

Medium format in your pocket - Hapo 66-E

Last Christmas I had the chance to hold a Zeiss Ikon folder camera in my hands for the first time^(*). Ever since then, having been recently infected with the vintage camera collector virus, I wanted to try taking pictures with one. A visit to Vienna in February was the perfect excuse to have a look around the stores in and around the Westbahnstrasse. After a little search, I got a very inexpensive camera whose lens was in excellent condition: a Hapo 66-E.


(EOS 40D, Sigma EX DG 50mm f/2.8 Macro, off-camera Speedlite 430EX II)
The Hapo 66-E is a medium format folder camera, produced by Balda in West Germany for the Photo Porst department stores (Hapo = HAnns POrst) between 1955 and 1961. Photo Porst was one of the biggest mail order sellers in Germany from its foundation in 1919 until it filed for bankruptcy in 2007. Along its history, Photo Porst made agreements with several camera makers of the time to produce cameras to be sold only through their mail order catalogs, kind of like what Sears did in the United States. The Hapo 66-E is, in fact, a Balda Mess-Baldix fitted with an Enna Haponar 75mm f/3.5 lens and a basic Pronto shutter with speeds from 1/25 to 1/200.


(EOS 40D, Sigma EX DG 50mm f/2.8 Macro, 1/25, f/6.3, ISO 100)
The Hapo uses medium format film of type 120, taking 12 frames in square 6x6 format, the same one I already knew from my Flexaret. There are two things that I love about 6x6 medium format. First, the size of the negatives: there is something very special about holding those huge 56x56mm frames in front of a light and wondering at the richness of the tones and the detail, especially with color slide film. I know of no computer monitor or projector able to convey the same feeling that looking at a medium format color slide frame does. Imagine a negative that is almost 10 times the size of a standard APS-C digital sensor (and almost 4 times the size of a full frame sensor) and can hold even more information per area unit. Welcome to medium format film! :)

Secondly, I find that 12 frames in a roll of film is a perfect measure for an excursion or a short photo walk. This still sounds strange even to me, used as I was to come back with 200+ digital shots from a mini photo walk around the corner, but I think that when you know that you only have 12 shots, you actually end up making better photographs. Roll film lacks, of course, the immediacy you would get with a digital camera, but the turnaround time is far better in comparison to the 36 frames you are bound to shoot with 35mm film.


Through the viewfinder of the Hapo 66-E (Coolpix S200, 1/67, f/3.1, ISO 100)
The Hapo has an uncoupled rangefinder: that means you can actually measure the distance to your subject, but then you need to read this distance from a wheel on the camera body and transfer it manually to the scale on the lens. Since I got used to estimate the focusing distance with the Retinette, though, I seldom use the rangefinder.


(EOS 40D, Sigma EX DG 50mm f/2.8 Macro, 1/60, f/5.0, ISO 100)
Operating the Hapo, as it happens with most vintage cameras, takes a while to get used to. Loading the film is the first challenge, because it uses a red window in the back to align the frames. In fact, you just need to use the red window to align the first frame: after that, the film advance mechanism (which has even a working counter!) will provide the exact spacing for the 12 frames. It is important to set the counter to 1, though, because these spacing cleverly accounts for the growing diameter of the film as it is advanced. On my first roll I had some quite happy overlapping accidents for not resetting the counter properly... There is a double exposure prevention mechanism as well, which blocks the shutter until the film has been advanced to the next frame. It needs to be operated carefully: sometimes it gets stuck and the shutter is not released. Not a big problem, though, with folder cameras you can always release the shutter directly, bypassing the shutter release on the camera body.

The Hapo is the first camera that I use where the shutter needs to be cocked^(**) separately; on all my other cameras the shutter is automatically cocked with the film advance mechanism. Quite easy to forget: I cannot count how many times did I press the button and wondered why nothing happened...


(EOS 40D, Sigma EX DG 50mm f/2.8 Macro, 1/20, f/6.3, ISO 100)
But, of all the features of my Hapie, what amazes me every time I get a new film developed is the sharpness of the lens. The richness of the detail this little simple lens (a Cooke's triplet) is able to record is absolutely exceptional. It is by far much sharper than the Tessar-like lens on the Flexaret or the Schneider-Kreuznach triplet on the Retinette.


(EOS 40D, Sigma EX DG 50mm f/2.8 Macro, 1/50, f/2.8, ISO 100)
What I find really exciting about medium format folder cameras like the Hapo 66-E is that you have all the advantages of medium format film but do not need to carry around a beefy twin lens reflex. In addition, they can be really old, which is something that very much appeals to me.

Hapo 66-E (camera-wiki.org) My Hapo 66-E flickr set

Maker	Balda
Model	Hapo 66-E
Type	Rangefinder (uncoupled) folder camera
Lens	Enna Haponar 75mm f/3.5
Shutter	Pronto 1/25 - 1/200 + B
Film type	Medium format (120), 6x6
Year	1955-61
Country	West Germany

^(*) the same one through which I, later on, would run a roll of film...
^(**) To cock the shutter means to pull a lever in order to provide the mechanical energy that the shutter requires for operating. This is the reason why there is no need of batteries of any kind: the source of energy is the photographer!

Ilford XP2 Super 400 - developing b&w in color negative chemicals

(Flexaret VI, Ilford XP2 Super 400, EI 400/27°)

Ilford XP2 Super 400 is a film for black&white prints that is developed using the C41 process, which is used for developing color negatives. I guess that's the reason why the negatives have a kind of subtle reddish tones.

Pictures taken on Ilford XP2 Super 400 in my flickr photostream