slides to prints

Hi all

I am very new to photography and w have been shooting just print

films. However all the books recommend shooting slides. My lab guy

says if I wanted prints I should get the slides scanned during the

development stage itself to ensure quality. Is it true

You don't have to get them scanned at the development stage necessarily. Take them home and spend time evaluating them on a light box and select the ones you may want to scan or print. Thats the beauty of slides. You spend half of what you would to process a roll of print film and then you can use that extra money to make a quality enlargement of your best ones. Most of the books you are reading recommend slides because its a better way to gauge your technique as a photographer. The slide will show you whatever happened at the moment of exposure as opposed to your standard prints that are a labs interpretation of your negative.

A professional printing lab can make as fine a print from a slide as they can from a negative. It WILL be a digital workflow (scan, Photoshop, digital ink-jet printer or laser RA-4 printer), since the R type papers have been discontinued. Circa $30 for an 8x10.

 

One hour places will not do a very good job scanning and printing slides. You can't get good cheap prints from slides, you can get good cheap prints from negatives.

"One hour places will not do a very good job scanning and printing slides. You can't get good cheap prints from slides, you can get good cheap prints from negatives."

 

At every Frontier lab I've ever been to, their prints from slides have been just as good as their prints from negs... usually just as fast, and usually the same price.

 

Granted, a Frontier print isn't the same thing as a LightJet print, or a Frontier print that came from a professional drum scan... but it's certainly good enough for beginners and even advanced amateurs. So, yes, you can get good cheap prints from slides. It just depends on where you go and what your definitions of good and cheap are.

I think John was refering to most 1 hour labs that do not handel slide printing. Wal-Mart has Fuji Frontier equipment in my area but Target, CVS, WalGreens, and Ekerds don't. Any slide printing is sent out and the prints are not cheap.

Hi all,

Thanks so much for your immediate replies. Let me elaborate my problems. I am from India and that too from Delhi.There is no such thing as a professional lab here. Just those 1 hr types you spoke about. Now these guys can either give me back my processed slides or in the development process itself convert them into CD format. Also I doubt if I will get a light box or a loupe here(but i'll try to do something about it).I'll also repeat my previous question. It's just been 4 months since I've started photography. Should I switch to slides?

Thanks again.

I would stick to print film if I were you. It costs less, is easier

to get developed and scanned in most places, and has a higher ISO

to quality tradeoff. Kodak 400UC and Fuji NPH are far better than

any 400 speed slide film, although Astia 100F and Kodak 100G are

probably better than current 100 speed print films.