XP2 Super Printing

Tried out my first roll of XP2 Super. The negs look fine. The guy who operates

the minilab tried to print them on his traditional (non digital) mashine and

the result was horrible. The then printed them on a digital machine (i.e.,

negs were scanned and then printed) and the results were good. The Kodak BW

C41 also prints well on his non-digital machine.

 

Is that a commmon problem? Or should I simply try out a different lab.

 

BTW: I'll be traveling to NYC soon and wonder whether someone could recommend

a good minilab (or chaine) (preferably midtown) to process XP2 super and color

negs.

 

Thanks for your comments.

On an optical C-print machine with color paper, it is difficult to get C-41 B&W films to print to a neutral gray. For optical machines, Kodak C-41 B&W films with the orange base are a little easier to gray-balance than XP2 films with a clear base.

 

 

When scanning and printing on digital C-print machines, gray-balancing C-41 B&W is as easy as pushing a button. Also, with digital C-print machines XP2 is swell because the scanners on these machines generally have some sort of Digital ICE variant software that can remove dust and scratches.

 

 

For 4x6 prints from optical or digital C-print machines, I shoot XP2 at E.I. 200. I've found that this gives me prints with the best contrast.

What you experienced is typical of XP2, for the reasons stated by the previous poster.

 

I prefer Kodak's C41 B&W offering, mainly because I find it to be faster, sharper, and finer-grained than XP2. I suppose I might prefer XP2 if I was doing optical/analog prints -- that seems to be the one area where it really shines.

Kodak used to make a C-41 film without the orange mask. It had all the virtues the previous poster attributes to the current Kodak film and was also suitable for darkroom printing. Unfortunately it was discontinued, probably for lack of demand.

 

Rollei, I have read, is now offering a color C-41 film without the orange mask. This is a film designed for scanning, as opposed to minilab optical printing. It should be better for optical b&w printing than a color film with the orange mask, though perhaps not so easy as XP2.

Thanks for the comments. I should add that the scanned pictures (printed) looked realy nice. The problem occured with the prints on a color optical machine (I did not have someone try to print them as B&W with a B&W wetroom processing).

Can be very difficult to get neutral b&w prints from an optical machine. Digital machines should = no problem. Many, many 1hour and minilabs have digital machines, so just go with that. XP2 is an awesome film! I usually shoot it with an extra stop of exposure (around 200 or 250) and then just process normally. I think it looks better that way -- less grainy.

XP2 was designed to be printed a traditional B/W silver paper. It is exceptional and gorgeous when printed that way.