"William Robb" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >Film to print has a lot more variables controled by the lab. We can process >the film well, or poorly. We can scratch the film, or otherwise mar the >image in a great variety of ways. >We can print it well, or poorly as well. > >Digital files are mostly finished images that get to have the start button >pushed and not much else. If we try to make big changes to the colour or >density, they can go pretty strange The reality is, I actually have less >control with digital than with film by the time I am getting down to making >prints. >The customer is responsible for the resolution being great enough, the white >balance being correct, the image compression not being too great, and the >exposure being close to correct. >Quite honestly, I have more trouble with digital print quality than with >film print quality because of customer misintervention of the process.
This is exactly what the lab manager said at the place I worked. C-41 processing gives everything a common, known foundation. For example, you only have one of two "white balances": Daylight or tungsten. (And for 99.99% of the time that means daylight.) Big changes to color or density really are unworkable with 8-bit JPEG files. We had one customer who sent us a big batch of files to be printed and somewhere in the middle they had (accidentally) set their camera's white balance to "fluorescent", giving everything a magenta cast. It's a nightmare for the lab because the average customer simply won't believe that it isn't the lab's fault. -- Mark Roberts Photography and writing www.robertstech.com
