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photo question 8-Dec-2004 At 7:53:43 PM Chester

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It sounds like you've got a lot of photography experience. However Provia 100f does have a finer grain structure at RMS Granularity value of 8 compared to Velvia 50 at 9. I think I originally missed the point of Steve's original comments. However I also think you've missed my point. I wasn't talking about what the resultant image/print would turn out like. I'm well aware of the advantages of slide film and the high contrast images they can achieve.

Both of you have commented that an ND Grad can't reduce the contrast of a scene. Well yes it can and it does. A grad filter generally as a clear portion and graduates to a darker portion (which can be as high as four stops of light).

An example: If you were to shoot a nice bright blue sky and a dark valley. With slide film you could:

Expose for the sky and underexpose the valley.
Expose for the valley and overexpose the sky.
or get somewhere in between, which may or may not be an acceptable image. Alternatively you could shoot a low contrast emulsion that has a wider contrast range.

However if you use a ND graduated filter, you can use it to bring the contrast range of the shot back to more of an equal footing. By putting the dark part of the filter to the top part of the shot you can effectively reduce the amount of light hitting the film for the sky portion of the scene. You actually over do it as well, and turn some light grey clouds into very dark looking ominous ones.

I hope this all makes sense for you.

Cheers
Gavin