Negatives to Prints. Percentage?

[ClaremontPhoto]

I heard the other day that five/ten years back 100% of negatives became prints.

And now that mass-market film cameras are pretty much obsolete the percentage of digital images to print is only about 1%.

How many prints do you make? Or is online gallery or blog display the way to go?

 

[JohnL]

Varies widely, but on the average I'd say I print less than 5% of what I shoot. And not all of these are really satisfying to me. The percentage is higher when the pix are for others, like when I need to get at least one decent shot of everyone at a family party or whatever, but much lower when shooting for myself. Using film, I prescan everything just to see the images on screen, and do a full scan of maybe 10-20%. After postprocessing, I just print the ones I like most.
This also applies to my older stuff. I am in the process of prescanning and classifying several hundred rolls of 35mm taken over 40+ years on and off. I am close to #400, and still have about 200 to go. I make a note when I reckon something would be worth printing again. Definitely less than 5%, despite the fact that about 95% are about OK for exposure and focus. The 90%+ just aren't that interesting 🙁

 

[Fred]

I tend to print about 50% from film not including the contact print. And like JohnL that percentage rises if the prints are for other people, roughly about 75%. I scan very few. I tend to shoot B&W negative (no choice now AGFA Scala chemistry has all but run out in the UK) and colour trannies.

From digital I only print maybe less than 5%.

 

[Seveneer]

I used to shoot digital and I have 10,000 image files and less than a dozen prints to show for it. This is not because I wasn't happy with them but that I just never got around to it.

Now I've returned to film I shoot transparencies. As soon as they're dry I mount them in glassless slide mounts and load them into my projector. I can then review them all blown up to 4 feet wide and select the best ones for printing. I now find myself printing as many as 15-20 ilfochromes per 36 exposure film. I have a good many prints around my house and more still filed away to be viewed another day (as well as the slides).

I still have 10,000 digital image files on a hard drive and have very little intention of printing any of them.

This is starting to sound like a film vs digital thing so I'll stop there.

/Phil.

 

[Socke]

When I shoot C41 I have 100% prints, when I shoot slides or digital less than 1%.
The reason? The cheapest print from C41 is 1 Eurocent here and you have to order them to get the scans on CD 🙂
Printing from digital and slides is very expensive, even more so if you want a print from traditional B/W.

 

[bmattock]

Less than 1% printed. Almost all scanned. Over 1 terabyte of TIF and JPG files online. I gotta do something about that.

Best Regards,

Bill Mattocks

 

[ClaremontPhoto]

I'm paying EUR 6 for a C41 dev and CD (lores and hires) about 1 hour service, no prints.

How much are you paying Socke?

 

[Socke]

At a german chemists chain, Seifenplatz, I pay 2.50 for development, 3 for the CD and 0.36 for 36 9x13cm prints. They even take back the blurry, unsharp, under or overexposed etc.pp. pictures, but IMHO that's not worth the hassle 🙂
The scans are 1200 x 1800 pixels.

Usualy I treat the prints as proofs to decide what I want bigger and have bigger enlargements and/or more copies made. Sometimes I rescan at home to work on the scans and order enlargments online wherever I get them cheap.

 

[ClaremontPhoto]

Thank you. That's pretty similar to my EUR 6 for dev and CD, and I forgot to mention I get an APS-style 'index print' too. It just about fits in the CD case.

 

[Pherdinand]

99%. But i have no film sanner.

 

[Pherdinand]

1 cent per print? maybe i should move to Bremen.

 

[Richard Black]

I'm in the same ballpark as Pherdinand, 99%. Only non-C41 B&W gets reviewed from contact sheets before selective printing. My digital is mostly grandsons so, those are printed nearly 100%!

 

[Andy K]

Quality is more important than quantity. I don't enlarge every frame of every roll I shoot. I check the contact print and select those I wish to enlarge. That doesn't mean I will never enlarge those not chosen when I first view the contact print, I may come back to them in a few weeks, months or even years.

 

[Kin Lau]

I heard the other day that five/ten years back 100% of negatives became prints.

With C41, that's true... but what % of those prints are garbage? With me, probably about 70%.. I got a roll of c-41 back from the lab a few weeks ago of fall shots done in morning light (sorry, all SLR shots), none of the prints were usable, and then I scanned everything myself... MUCH better.

With b&w, I just build up a list of prints I want to do, and then do them when I have the time. It's only about 1-5%.

With digital, the wildlife/bird shots are only about 1-5% to print. But I take a lot of shots just to be able to ID the bird.

 

[lido]

I don't shoot colour film at all, it is all digital. Maybe 1% of those end up printed. The rate goes higher for family snapshots where I do 4x6 at local 1 hour lab for $.20 per print. When I print for myself, I use my Epson and print at 8.5x11.

For B&W, I don't do family snapshots, develop and prescan everything. About 30% gets full size scan and then 10% of that gets printed on my Epson using MIS B&W inks on 8.5x11 paper.

Back in the days when I used to shoot C41 colour, 100% got printed and a lot of it ended up in garbage.

 

[dmr]

I heard the other day that five/ten years back 100% of negatives became prints.

My guess is that for the average Joe Consumer who still uses film, if there really is such a market left, the print ratio is (still) something like 120% to 140% or so, since the processing places push double prints and sometimes throw in extra prints as a promotional thing.

Notice how most of them just automatically ask "single or double prints?" as if nobody ever did no prints. Sometimes when I say "no prints" they look at me like I was trying to order ham and Swiss in a Kosher deli! 🙂 Yeah, they often stop and double-take. 🙂

And now that mass-market film cameras are pretty much obsolete the percentage of digital images to print is only about 1%.

If that. ... I know several people who shoot and "chimp" a lot (that has to be my new word of the year) 🙂 but almost never print, or even download to their computer. Some show their photos off by just passing around the camera.

How many prints do you make? Or is online gallery or blog display the way to go?

The percentage of what I shoot that I actually use in some form is probably 5-10%. Out of a roll, if I get 1-2 real keepers, I'm tickled pink! 🙂

 

[Bobbo]

For my film (b&w printed in the school darkroom), it's about 15 or 20:1. For digital (which I only use for newspaper work) I never print anything, but the editors like my photos, so it's about 20:1 that I submit and 60:1 make it into print. If I relied on machine-gun fast frame rates (instead of actually picking my shots and learning how to time them) like some of the yahoos I know, that would be more like 2500:1. Nothing like the local "pro" shooting 500 frames and then asking me if I got anything good with my 30 frames...sometimes having a "slow" 10D is a good thing.

 

[Nikon Bob]

I shoot C41 film and before getting a scanner I always got prints. The prints were used to see which, if any, would be printed larger. I now have all my film developed and put on CD with no prints. The CD will tell me what I want to print larger which are very few. I can believe that there are far fewer prints made today even by film users. As for trip albums I think that the CD/DVD album is the way I will go.

Bob

 

[nomade]

At least 95% if we add the photos i've on my hard drive(cell)...Cause i'm using film most of them times, so the lab i'm dealing with print the photos...

 

[jtzordon]

I'm lazy and rarely get anything printed. I will usually get contact prints made or a cd. I used to scan the negs myself before my scanner broke. I think I enjoy the process much more than the result.

The exception: vacation photos all get printed. The wife likes prints.