FILM + DIGITAL = PISSED

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(let me preface this by saying "i know, i should dev and print my own film")

but help me out here.

i took a color 400 35mm roll in to my local super awesome pro photo finishing/dev company. got the prints back. it was expensive. not a prob. but when i scrutinized the pics... i saw the telltale crappy pixelated digital grain on the print. how could this be?! the whole point in shooting 35mm is the resolution and quality. found out a friend recently started working there in dev and he said they process your 35mm roll, scan the neg, and print that image/file ON AN INKJET.

am i crazy? or just oldschool?! what is the point in doing that?!

is this just how the industry is now? is it just more cost effective for the company to print this way? i'm a little pissed. i shoot digital and loooove pshop, so i'm not anti-tech by any means haha... i just love 35mm too.

thoughts?
 
I do think that the vast majority of labs do use a digital process now. The film is developed, then scanned then printed from that digital file. I'm not sure what the print type is though...I didn't think it was inkjet though.

Most labs will reprint if you are not happy. Maybe their main printer was down so they tried to sneak some poor ones by you...maybe something was set incorrectly...maybe your shots were exposed poorly and their 'fix' resulted in bad image quality.

Examine your negatives and ask for reprints.
 
you certainly mean you are pissed off, mate, right?

Just getting pissed from combining film and digital only, would make my life much cheaper :p
 
if you want high quality large scale prints from your film negatives, you will have to pay more I guess. Most labs these days do this via digital, which might result in poor quality for larger prints if it is purely done on "auto".

I would complain if the prints appear pixelated.
 
(off) haha yeah, i'm not drunk... but with the way my workday is going... i will be after 5 lol!!

bigmike: true. i'll look into it more. as i recall (they're not in front of me) the negs were alright. maybe it is that printer... i wonder if their other 35mm customers see that too...
 
bigmike: true. i'll look into it more. as i recall (they're not in front of me) the negs were alright. maybe it is that printer... i wonder if their other 35mm customers see that too...

If the negatives were pixelated, then that would be a wonder indeed ;) For the negatives they have to use chemistry only, no digital step involved.
 
alex thanks for your input! maybe i should just get a high end neg scanner, so i can control the quality myself in pshop? i was just a little suprised b/c the prints are the standard 3x5" and i can see the pixels... to the extent if i printed a similar tif file at home, i'd say it looks like it was 275 dpi or under. def not 300!
 
lol i guess what bigmike was getting at is that if i had ****ty negs, they may have tried to 'shop them to make the print look better (and possibly not saving a high res file of that "adjustment")
 
alex thanks for your input! maybe i should just get a high end neg scanner, so i can control the quality myself in pshop? i was just a little suprised b/c the prints are the standard 3x5" and i can see the pixels... to the extent if i printed a tif file at home, i'd say it looks like it was 275 dpi or under. def not 300!

Something about their printing must be odd. I had several images printed by labs, sending them digital files (scanned from 35mm negative and slides) ... and I never saw pixelation, not even in larger scale printing.

scanning yourself and digital postprocessing takes quite some time per image. even with a fast scanner and fast computer.
 
that's what i would think! if anything, they would have the BEST scanners and printing system... this co has been around forever and does a great business... so i was suprised. maybe it was a trainee that scanned them. (maybe it was my newly hired friend hahaha).

and yeah, even scanning prints at home 1200dpi... takes a million years.
 
They should have drum scanners, you cannot get better by scanning at home.

I suspect it is the printing ... just complain and tell them what you got is not acceptable.
 
I agree on the drum-scanner comment. If you are seeing pixelation, I'd wonder about the quality of either the printer, or the operator. I am getting wonderful prints from Epson Pro printers, and even at re-sampled sizes.
 

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