----- Original Message ----- From: "Mishka" Subject: prints contrast question
Crystal archive, like all photo papers, is pretty limited in range, I think around 32:1, perhaps a bit less. This translates into a 5 stop or slightly less range. Modern colour print films will capture as much as 8 stops of exposure. If you are shooting in harsh conditions, (not knowing what conditions you were shooting in, I can only guess), then the paper is just not able to capture the full range of the film without custom printing. Pro papers have a longer range, getting up to 64:1, but still won't print as much as the film sees. You can get the stuff printed, but you have to go custom, and get the highlights burned down. This has always been the way it is with colour printing. If the paper has too long a range, then the bulk of the work printed on it will look muddy, so they have to compromise and let the extremes go. I they don't, then most peoples photos will look ugly, which won't sell. Most of the time, it works pretty good, but if you are photographing the Grand Canyon at high noon, you are going to have problems. William Robb > does anyone know, how much contrast can color paper (specifically fuji > crystal archive) handle? > the reason i am asking is that i just came back from a vataction and got > back a batch of prints. which do suck by any definition of it: no shadow > detail, blown out highlights. true, the original light was pretty harsh, > still i was very upset. until i looked at a bach of slides i took under the > same conditions. which were nothing like the prints! > now i am scanning the print film, i notice that often i cannot get the whole > dynamic range with a single pass (nikonscan 4000), i have to scan once for > shadows and once for highlights. but altogether it looks like the film > captures most of the dynamic range of the scene. > my question is: what's the point of so wide lattitude of print film, if it > cannot be printed anyway (in pre-scanner era)? or, is it just a particularly > bad kind of paper i ran into? > > best, > mishka > > >
