I agree with Mike that Provia is a very nice film. However, if Provia is good, Astia is great. Sure, it costs about $3 a roll more than Provia, but it IS worth it in my opinion.
I've been shooting Provia for about 2 years now, and have been very happy with the results. When Astia came out, I had my doubts; after all, I WAS quite satisfied with Provia. Trust me, if you like Provia, you will love Astia. It has the same speed as Provia, and the same super fine grain, but the colors are better. I've shot several rolls of it on different subjects: UP, SF, & BN. Astia makes SF red look more red, very close to K25. Astia makes UP yellow look more like UP yellow. Honestly, it doesn't do much for BN green that Provia doesn't already do -- I'm waiting to try it out on the new super pumpkins. Astia also makes the sky a little more blue than Provia does. I personally think it is well worth the extra money, and I intend to standardize on Astia as soon as I deplete my stock of Provia. One word of advice for the Fuji uninitiated -- do NOT underexpose any Fuji slide film under any circumstances. It does NOT behave at all like Kodachrome. Underexposed Fujichrome of any flavor looks like crap. IF you must error, overexpose, as Provia, Astia, and Velvia all take well to moderate overexposure. In some cases, I've toasted the exposure by as much as a stop and couldn't tell much difference. With Velvia (which I do NOT recommend for general use), you can overexpose the hell out of it and get nice looking results -- in fact, I prefer to rate it at ISO32 vs ISO50. If you try Provia or Astia, amuse me by trying a full sun exposure of about 1/500 and 1/3 of a stop off of f8 towards f5.6 (i.e. f8 and open up 1/3). With snow cover, you might try f8 and stop down about a 1/3 to a 1/2 -- no real need to worry about overexposure like you would if you were shooting K25. For fun, you might try shooting a stationary train (we've got LOTS of those around here) and bracket it about 2 stops on the overexposed side to 1 stop on the underexposed side, just to see what it looks like. A final word of caution. Do NOT take Fujichrome to some local idiot E6 lab -- the quality of your final image is very dependent on how good the processing lab is. I use Fuji mailers on all my Fujichrome, though I hear A&I also does a pretty good job. Once you are accustomed to how properly processed Fujichrome SHOULD look, you can try a local E6 lab that you trust (preferrably with some shots you don't care about) to see how they measure up. Don't make the mistake (like so many do) of writing off Fujichrome just because you've only seen it processed by Walmart. I'm not THAT stuck on Fuji films, but I HAVE found them to be VERY useful, to the point that I almost never shoot Kodachrome anymore. Still, I DO agree that for PERFECT light, and slow moving trains (or roster shots), K25 is still the film of choice. For anything else, I'll go with Astia. Hope this helps. Jim (who got more sleep last night and isn't QUITE as grumpy) Jim Gilley [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.eesoft.com/rr --> SPORRS: Serious Photographers of Railroad Related Subjects
