pro film processing vs regular film processing

I am a beginner, I have a film processing question.

If I take a pro negative film, such as Kodak Portra, to regular

processing lab, does it effect any?

Or the processing of regular film, such as kodak max versatility, and

pro film, such as portra are the same?

Should I take pro film to a prolab, since its processing differs from

others?

Here is my plan:

Previously, I was thinking to use slide film because of paper

printers different characteritics, however, I recently learned that

after your film is processed, instead of having prints, you can ahve

a picture CD, which I think scanned film. Now it makes much more

sense because, I do not need to scan slides or negatives at home to

use with photoshop. Therefore, I need to learn whether I can use

reggular photolabs with pro film.

Regards,

burak.

PictureCDs have very low resolution (cheaper to scan) and quite poor quality. They are OK for web pages, but not for serious photography, unlike the older, professional quality (and correspondingly more expensive to produce) PhotoCD Master. Unfortunately PhotoCD has been discontinued.

High-quality scanning is very labor-intensive, and thus expensive. If you want high-quality results, you will have to scan yourself, good dedicated film scanners cost in the $300 to $600 range.

The difference between a pro lab and the 1-hour minilab in your local grocery is in how well the operators are trained, how often the equipment is calibrated, how often the chemicals are replenished, and how carefully the film is handled. The process is the same and should yield the same results, however cheap consumer service will have greater variation in quality. Avoid services such as Ritz/Wolf Photo. They offer essentially drugstore minilab quality at pro lab prices.

<p>The developing part, which turns the film into negatives, is standardized; any Portra or Gold Ultra Max Zoom Whatever They Call It This Week or Superia or anything else that says C-41 on the box needs exactly the same series of chemicals at exactly the same temperature for exactly the same time.</p>

<p>Printing may be a different story. Different types of film have different colour and density properties; for example, if you have negatives from a few different types of films, you'll probably notice that the orange/brown colour of the film itself is a different colour for different films. Minilabs use settings called channels to account for this. Your local one-hour lab will probably have channels for Max, and they probably will not have channels for Portra, which means they'll have to pick something close but potentially not quite right. As digital minilab systems (e.g. Fuji Frontier) are becoming more common, this issue is starting to go away, because the digital minilabs scan the film and can adjust for just about any kind of film you can feed into them.</p>

<p>As well, getting good prints requires a certain level of skill on the part of the operator. Bad or uncaring operators simply feed the film in and let the minilab decide what brightness and colour corrections are required for each picture. Good operators look at each frame and make manual adjustments where necessary, and they probably have a better idea of what needs to be done than the bad operator will have when you show him the print and complain about how poorly it was printed.</p>

<p>You're more likely to get better operators in better labs; minimum wage doesn't buy you a lot of photographic experience. As someone else pointed out, better labs are also more likely to do proper maintenance on their equipment, not try to cut corners on replenishing chemistry, avoid scratching your negatives, etc. You're more likely to get more consistently good results, and fewer really bad results, from a better lab.</p>

<p>Picture CD is relatively low resolution. Kodak's Web site says it's 1024x1536, which is 1.5 megapixels. The usual rule of thumb is that you need 200-300 pixels per inch to get photo-quality results, so picture CD is good for up to 5x7" prints.</p>