Why poor quality prints from Fuji Frontier?

[rmp-images]

I am an amature photographer on a budget. I shoot Fuji NPH and NPS

(because they are fabulous people films) with a Canon EOS1N for

family photos. I have my film developed at the Tucson COSTCO, which

uses a Fuji Frontier processer. I am conitually disappointed in the

quality of the prints because they turn out dark with a bluish-green

tint to them. Costco cannot explain the problem.

 

With my Costco prints I also receive a CD and the prints I make from

the CD, on my HP 932c printer, are almost perfect. So good in fact

that family and friends have some of them framed for display. I have

explored the benefits of a pro lab and the costs are prohibitive.

 

My question is: Can anyone explain why the Fuji Frontier turns out

such poor quality prints from, obviously good negatives? Why are the

prints dark and tinted a bluish-green? Should I only give them

consumer grade film to process?

 

Any help is appreciated, thanks.

[paul_mchenry]

I've had the same problem at Costco with the same films. I've taken them back for reprints. When the lab tech who actually knows what to do is there they come out fine. Apparently it has to do with matching the settings on the machine to the film. Needless to say, I don't take anything important to Costco.

[freehueco]

I'd chalk it up to a bad tech. You need to find someone who knows what they are doing and have them always print your stuff..

[josphy]

Yeah, sounds like the lab tech isn't doing a good job of adjusting the density and filtration. You can look on the back of the prints and see what adjustments (if any) he or she made. If there were no adjustments, it would say NNN (that's the cyan, magenta, and yellow filtration) followed by the density adjustment which would just say 0 if there was no change. If the tech added some cyan and darkened the print a couple notches, it would say 1NN +2. Subtracting cyan, magenta or yellow results in a letter instead of a number so subtracting cyan (aka adding red) would show ANN. Anyway, maybe that will help you figure out what the lab tech did.

[leica ron]

Finding a good printer is like finding a good mechanic for your car.

 

I found one and I followed her from her last lab to a new one. The bonus is that the new place has the latest Noritsu which 'rocks'.

 

There are choices between Costco/Walmart and Pro-labs. Find a good camera store with a lab on site, they're more consistent (usually).

 

Having said that, I've seen fabulous results from Walmart and my local supermarket. So it's not all in the machine, the operator needs to know how to use it and care !!!

[Jerry_]

Have you taken the CD back to the place with the Fuji Frontier and printed a couple of images? If the color is good, take all the prints back for a refund (or a remake, please) and see what happens. You may have to get a manager involved.....

[scott_eaton]

The lab is likely using cheaper paper and hans't calibrated it right.

[bill_pearce]

Despite what we read on the web initially, there's noting magic about a Frontier. There's plenty of other good machines out there. What's magic is the operator. Where I live, there's a frontier lab that does consistently poor work, everything at least 5 points cyan. That's exactly like their older optical printer was. The best machine prints where I live (and remember, there is a reason they are called machine prints and are less expensive than hand prints) are from a Konica machine.

 

Bill Pearce

[johnmarkpainter]

There's no mystery....they are doing it wrong. Go somewhere else. There has to be a

decent Fuji Lab in Tuscon that isn't too expensive.

 

You are using expensive Film and then losing your quality at the last stage. I take my

more snapshot oriented film to a really good Frontier Lab. I am still always surprised at

how much of a quality boost I get when I go to a Pro lab (even on the basic Machine Proof

prints).

 

jmp

[bjmarkowitz]

I have had mixed results at Costco. You get what you pay for. I have had some great results and some really crappy ones. I think the reason for the bad results are that they donot adjust the settings for each picture or even each roll. They have the machine set to print at one setting all the time regardless of what comes in. If your pics are fine for that setting, great results...if not (over or underexposed or lots of shadows) they tend to have worse results.

[kari douma]

I tried saving money and took some film to Sam's club (similar to Cotsco I think). They slaughtered it. I took them back more than once for a redo. I then decided it wasn't worth the time, or hassle. Also, I didn't want my name to look bad with bad developing. That was when I decided it was worth the $25 a roll for prints from a pro lab. I made sure I charged enough to cover the cost in my pricing. I won't do cheep work and give them a crappy job with my name on it... they can go to someone else if they want it that cheep. I also did a favor for a friend and took some B&W shots of her newborn. She didn't want to wait for my pro lab to develop them, or pay the money. So, I gave her the roll, and let her take it to a 1 hour photo. (I made sure I used C-41 for that purpose). Any way, they turned out terrible! They were green! She thought it was my bad photography skills at first. I talked her into having a few reprints made at my pro lab, and they were beautiful. That was the last time I ever handed over a roll of film, even for friends and family. I want to be careful to what is attached to my name!

[Greg M]

This whole string of messages is why I now shoot most of my pictures with a Digital Rebel. Trying to find a lab that can consistently and correctly process and print color negative film can drive you nuts. Of course, now that I'm doing that I've discovered a whole other set of problems, like monitor calibration and the need to buy a CRT monitor instead of working my images from my laptops LCD screen IN ADDITION TO still needing to find a lab that can consistently print my files in a decent way. Oh well, at least I have kept my EOS 3.

[kyle_joyce]

I've been taking little league shots and plan on selling them, so i have used several rolls and different styles.

 

Sometimes costco (In store) does good, sometimes just ok.

Reala has worked best but i haven't used as many rolls of Reala.

Superior 400 has worked good also. (10 bucks for roll of 36 double prints)

 

Costco send off (Qualex, has done ok with Kodak but the Fugi Superior 400 has seemed to be dark). (6 bucks 36 roll double prints)

 

Both did good with the UC 400, but I only use one roll at each place.

 

I'm picking up film tonite from Ritz camera So I'll post how they do. (they are 12-13 for double print 36 roll)

[ben_lazarus]

I know this is an old thread, but I wanted to post for two reasons; first, to thank the poster above who provided the Fuji Frontier magic decoder ring. That is very useful information. Second, to weigh in with a test of sorts I just conducted.

 

I took three rolls of Porta 400UC to a local pro lab (Procolor on Hennepin, for those in Minneapolis), which has a Frontier and prints on Crystal Archive, and got 4x6 prints. I then took the same negatives to a Ritz (in IDS Center, relocated from City Center) that has a Frontier and prints on the same paper, and ordered 4x6 reprints of about 35 of the frames.

 

I casually compared the prints, examining each side-by-side for no more than a minute each. The prints are the same size, from the same model machine, on the same paper, and made from the same negatives. Objectivity ends there, of course, because this test is nothing more than determing which prints I subjectively liked more.

 

For many (15 or so) of the prints, there is no real difference that I can see, but for several of them, they may as well be different photographs. In all cases where there is a difference, the prints from the pro lab are very much better, where "better" is defined as above - I liked them more, for reasons that vary which each comparison, but almost always, a color present in one print that I feel is missing from the other. Or, a vividness (sorry for the limited vocabulary) that is missing in one, but punches you in the face in the other, as I remember it having punched me in the face in the original scene.

 

I then (after reading this thread), compared the codes on the back. All of the Ritz prints are (unsurprisingly) "NNN 0" - a handful of the prints from the pro lab (5 or 6 of the 35) were tweaked, but there are many prints that look much better from the pro lab that are also "NNN 0"

 

I should also mention that the majority of the handful that were tweaked by the pro lab, I feel I had overexposed these by a full stop or more. These are my first rolls back into photography after ten years away, and with a new camera, so in some of the frames, both labs were working with flawed source material.

 

Draw your own conclusions. Mine is what I guess we all already knew: it takes more than a certain machine and certain paper to make good prints, and 'garbage in' will by default result in 'garbage out', but with some work, it doesn't always have to.

 

P.S. I also got scans from Ritz, and I have never in my life seen such shoddy work. The scans are *filthy*, with enormous pieces of dust and hair and god knows what scarring every single frame, and all kinds of other problems that I have neither the technical vocabulary nor time to describe. Remember that these are pristine negatives never out of their sleeves, and only 24 hours from the lab that processed them. I have to go back and check them now to make sure they weren't permanently damaged.