scanning a negative

[bnjlosh]

How much quality is lost if you scan a negative and send it off to be printed at the lab vs sending the negative to the lab to be printed...I have always just scanned and sent off but I have been thinking about it more lately...I use an epson 3170 and usually send off to ezprints or adorama...any suggestions? I know I could get a dedicated film scanner and I'd see some difference, but how much?

thanks (and I hope this topic hasn't been hashed before, couldn't find anything)

 

[bmicklea]

It depends on your tolerances. Technically anytime you scan or print a negative you lose a little detail - whether or not that's a problem depends on how much you care. I'm lucky enough to have a professional lab within 10 minutes of my apartment so I've always taken my negatives to them for traditional printing.

The only exception to this is if I'm printing something from chromes. If it's a great picture I might splurge for the trans-neg and print, otherwise I'll scan and print digitally.

Brad

 

[Doug]

It's very likely the photo lab would scan the neg anyway, and use the scan to make the print. One of the bigger local labs here does that, and I imagine an enlarger with a hi-res LCD panel where the neg holder would be in the old days. They print onto regular photo paper with wet processing, but it's a digital image that's projected onto the paper.

The other local lab also makes a scan, but from what I understand of their explanation, the scan serves as a preview, and a means of controlling the color and exposure in a calibrated connection to a regular optical enlarger that projects the customer negative onto the wet-process color paper. They can capture the scan and burn it onto a CD if the customer wishes, but the scan doesn't make the enlargement directly.

If you want to have the lab print from your own scan, probably best to supply the largest scan you can. I've found that a really nice 5x7 print can be made from a 2000x3000 pixel scan; haven't tried 8x10, but that might be fine too... When I had an 11x14 print made at the lab I first mentioned above, they made a scan of 4400x5600 pixels... 23.5 megapixels.