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Re: [OM] Scanning slides vs. negs (was How many pixels in a 35mm film im

Subject: Re: [OM] Scanning slides vs. negs (was How many pixels in a 35mm film image)
From: Moose <olymoose@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Wed, 01 Jan 2003 21:21:14 -0800
C.H.Ling wrote:

Your words about "scanning film is still not mature" triggered me to think
about the film printing process, the digital age is already started and
traditional film printing's day is counting but the film printing process is
still very disappointing, as least many of us has poor experience in
printing labs. Although they are one hour labs but the equipment has been
developed for many years and they are professional equipment, why the
results are still not satisfying? Is the basic reason the nature of
negative? is it inherent hard to print?
The photo processing business as a whole is a high volume, low margin, economically mature industry. The vast majority of the customers are satisfied with the average product and the major determinants of choice of processor are price and convienience. You are simply not their target customer. I know lots of people who are highly satisfied with random cropping, oversaturated and often unrealistic color, excessive contrast with white detailless skys, etc. etc. from cheap P&S and disposable cameras.

There is a Kodak TV commercial here where 2 young women go on a tour of Rome with a fast driver. One uses a regular disposable and the other a Kodak Max disposable. One gets pictures where everything is an unrecognizable blur and the other gets pictures where nothing appears to be moving and all the sights are recognizable. Those are the criteria of the majority of the market. They aren't wrong, they simply want a different thing than you and I do. However, they are the vast majority of the market volume, so the vast majority of the market providers cater to their needs. I usually get my procesing from a photo shop as Kodak Royal or Fuji Premium Plus. As a test, I recently tried a roll sent through a drug store for Kodak Picture processing. I was amazed! Those prints were so bright, saturated and contrasty, had so much 'POP', they practically jumped off the paper and assaulted my eyeballs directly. Not particularly like the things (mostly flowers) I took pictures of, but fabulous eye candy. Oh yes, about half the price of the premium processing. I'm thinking about trying a roll of Portra NC with this processing. Will the opposites create something nice....or a monster??

I think negative is inherently hard to print in the simple sense that the film carries considerably more range of brightness than the paper can reproduce. This creates an inherently insoluble problem for automated printing equipment which can't maintain both shadow and highlight detail and doesn't know which is important in each image and can't decrease contrast too much without losing the 'pop' that most consumers like, realistic or not.

Moose




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