Negative / print sizes

Hi,

 

I have been looking at my 35mm negatives and comparing them to the

high street developers prints. The negatives seem to have much more

detail than the prints do. ie, it looks like the lab has cropped the

actual negative picture by a small amount. Is this typical? The

outer edges of the negative picture have been cropped. about 2-5 mm

from each negative. Prints were 5x7.

 

Any info would be appreciated.

 

Paul

Yes, they crop about 1mm from each side of the negative. Once I asked the lab why, and they told me that it's inevidable with automatic processing machines.

This is to be expected: 35mm negs measure 24x36mm, giving an aspect ration of 2:3 or 1:1.5.

 

For a print to be made filling a piece of paper with a different aspect ratio (for example 5x7) the frame will need to be cropped slightly.

Ask your lab if they'll print 7.5x5 for you. Some do.

My long-time camera store / lab will do 6 by 9 for the same price as 5 by 7 (60 cents each at time of development). It preserves the 2 by 3 ratio. They can do this easily since they already have rolls of 6 inch paper loaded to do the 4 by 6 prints.

As mentioned above, 5x7 is a different ratio than a 35mm negative, so you'll end up losing more, but the machine prints do tend to crop a little bit from the negs anyway. The viewfinder on my camera isn't 100% so I figure I never noticed what's getting cropped out anyway. :-P