Preparing work for publishing; have film drum scanned?

When submitting work for publication in magazines or books how do you

supply the images?<br>

I know a lot of photographers are using negative film now but when it

comes sharpness and grain, has it been favorable for YOU to use slide

or negative film?<br>

Do you have the publisher handle you slides or negatives or do you

prepare them yourself?<br>

How do you prepare them, take them to a press or have them scanned?

<br>

Do you have drum scans made and if so, what size in proportion to the

print size do you have them made?<br>

I usually just supply my images to publishers in whatever format they

ask, I almost always use negative film and usually the editors want

300dpi A4 sized scans, so I'll take them to the lab and have durm

scans made, but I thought I'd just sort of gauge what other

photographers do when sending their work to the editors.

Unless you have prepress experience (it sounds like you do not), you're much better off giving either slides or custom prints. Negatives have way too much latiitude in how they can be interpreted, and you are likely to be either deeply dissappointed with the result, or get drawn into a lengthy and very, very expensive toing-and froing with the poor soul who attempts to scan and color correct them for you. I believe most magazines prefer/only accept slides. However in this day and age, anything is possible, and your publisher will have the last word on preferred format(s). Don't assume anything, or solicit third-party advice; ask the publisher directly.

Nowadays for publication, scans or slides are just fine. For submissions, I get the feeling slides are still prefered.

I would think that a drum scan is overkill for magazine

publication. So far nobody has objected to receiving scans

from my LS4000 for publication.

As long as we are not talking reportage work I always use MF

slide film that I scan myself with a Minolta Dimage Scan Multi

Pro. This way I can fully control what will be given to the

publisher. I also avoid them to damage my valuable chromes

(which used to happen more often than was acceptable).

Chromes simply give an unrivaled colour quality and no visible

grain in printed work. Everything looks so much cleaner. I put

one scan on one CD (my scans are typically done at 4800 dpi,

resulting in 650Mb files at 16 bit), so that the publisher can

downsample to the right size for publication. This is the best way

to preserve maximum quality. 'Stepped' resizing is not very

advisable. Not all are happy with my big files, but this is how I do

it anyway.

Every publication I've dealt with recently has asked for scans. I don't think any publication prints from non-digital images now, so it would have to be done by the publication anyway.

 

I've used a 4000 dpi film scanner and never had any complaints. A drum scan would cost more and, for what they need for publication, probably not give much more quality.

 

I shoot almost exclusively on negative film and no-one has complained.

I mostly shoot colour negative film for commissioned work and I always provide

hand-prints. Here in the UK that is the norm, though more photographers are now

supplying scans from negatives. If I had an Imacon I'd do the same.

Finished prints or a "ready to print file from a scan" is how all photo editors require from

me. And always from a hi-res drum scan if going the scan route. The scan is not the place

to save a couple bucks. Your entire shoot is riding on the quality of the scan.