Velvia vs. Provia 100F

A Test Report by Jonathan Sachs
Introduction
Fuji Velvia and Provia 100F are two of the most commonly used films for professional quality landscape and nature photography. Soon after its introduction a number of years ago, Velvia became the film of choice for many professional landscape photographers because of its high resolution, fine grain, and saturated colors. With the recent introduction of Provia 100F I decided to test it as a successor to Velvia from the standpoint of the quality of digital images scanned from the film. Since Provia 100F is rated somewhat paradoxically as having finer grain than Velvia but lower resolution, it was not clear which film would produce more detailed scans.
I compared images scanned from each film with respect to several criteria:

Resolving power‚ the ability to extract very fine image detail.

Smooth rendition of clear blue sky‚ a major problem with landscapes is annoying texture in clouds and blue skies that gets amplified when sharpening the...