For sometime, Velvia has been the premier film for nature photography. Photographers might use other films when they needed extra speed or felt Velvia would produce overly saturated colors, but the majority of professional and advanced amateur nature photographs shoot Velvia most of the time. Recently Kodak has introduced 100VS (Vivid Saturation) and challenged Fuji's leadership in highly saturated films.

The basic differences: Fuji is still finer grained with a RMS of 9 vs an RMS of 11 for 100VS. Kodak is faster 100 ASA vs 50 ASA (Velvia is often rated at 40).

Descriptions only helps so much when comparing films, what you really need to do is go out and shoot and compare the different films. Well, if you have not had a chance yet here are some scans to help.

Techinical Data:

Top Pair: Eos Elan IIe, 20-35 2.8L, ~1/8 sec shutter speed, lighting was heavy overcast, Yosemite. Pictures were scanned using then Minolta Dimage Dual 35mm scanner at 2400DPI. Using Photoshop, I did adjusted the scans to compensate for the shifts the scanner adds and converted the images to small JPGS. The exact same adjustments were applied to both.

Bottom Pair: Eos Elan IIe, shutter speed ~1/30 sec, lighting was shade under clear skies, no filtration. Pictures were scanned using then Minolta Dimage Dual 35mm scanner at 2400DPI. Velvia was shot at ASA 50, 100VS at ASA 100. Using Photoshop a small portion of each image was extracted. No other modifications was made with Photoshop other than converting to JPEG.

The main difference that I notice is a bluish cast to the Velvia pictures. The greens of the moss, and the color of the pine needles look more accurate in the 100VS slide (At least that's how I remember them). It also looks like the 100VS has slightly more contrast under these conditions.

As I get a chance to use 100VS more, I will add more comparisons shots.

While you are here you might want to check out some of my more interesting photographs.