reprints not very sharp

[annelizly]

I took my photos to get reprints. I had them use the negative to get a 8x10 because I wanted a great , sharp colored picture. I thought they turned out pretty good, not great though. Had a customer ***** to me about how they could do a better job on their home computer.

What can I do to get a better picture in the future from my developer?

 

[thebeginning]

hmm. can they scan your negatives somehow and then put the high-res files on a cd? im not sure if that is even possible with negative film unless you get the actually little prints scanned, which would look crappy. If you really want to get more control over how it looks, shoot slide film and have them scan the slides as high res digital files. then edit the photo up (sharpening and whatever else you might want to have touched up) and print the photo from the file. I'm sure your developer could do that.

 

[nealjpage]

How's the neg? It's hard to get a clear, large print from a iffy negative.

 

[ksmattfish]

You don't say whether you are using a full service photo lab, or an econo lab. Even so, focusing has been pretty much nailed in the photo printing industry for a long time now. Unless you lab's machine is messed up the problem is with the neg. If you can't get a good 8"x10" optical print from a 35mm neg, it's not likely that anyone could do much better with a scan of the neg.