Excessive cropping in minilabs

[denis_connolly]

Recently I've been amazed to see how much of the 35mm frame my local

minilab (Boots in the UK) is not printing. About 3mm all round the

frame is ignored. I only realised this was happening when they d&p'd

my holiday photos (Paris) and the top was missing from all the Eiffel

tower shots.

 

Checking over some older negatives I can see this has been happening

for a long time though I had assumed the framing erors were my fault.

 

Is this just one bad minilab or is this problem more widespread?

[juergenf]

In the days before I scanned film myself (not so long ago), it happened to me all the time. Most minilab operaters problably use some sort of 'auto-crop' option.

[randall ellis]

I used to use a mini-lab here in the States, but they always did a nice job of printing. I got to know them and they went the extra mile to do a nice job. They even did color corrections and custom crops for free if I asked for it. I only ever used that one lab and now I do almost exclusively black and white so all I can say is try to get to know them. Show them what they have been doing and see if they can print the whole image. Chances are, if they are not a large chain shop, they will do what you ask.

 

- Randy

[hakon_soreide]

If you think 3mm is excessive cropping, you should have seen my 6x7 negatives that came back cropped to a 2:3 ratio. 4.7x7 - and that's even before calculating how much they probably also shaved off the sides.<p>

Hakon Soreide<br>

Bergen, Norway<br>

<a href="http://www.hakonsoreide.com">www.hakonsoreide.com</a>

[grinder]

The problem is 35mm ratio does not fit on to the standard size paper we all use so it has to be cropped on the sides or you would have blank space on the top and botttom. in horizontal shooting you most likly rarly notice but in vertical you will. For example on a 5x7 over 1/2 inch is croped on the sides. I hope this helps.

[denis_connolly]

Donald I have wondered why printing paper is made with an aspect ratio that doesn't match the 35mm neg.

 

When I print my mono shots on 10x8 in the darkroom there is an obvious mismatch- I can't see why the paper can't be made the right size?

[grinder]

Denis, if you do your own printing optical in the darkroom or digital you can buy 8x12 paper witch matches alot better but the drawback then is the price of framing. I shoot 6x6 alot so I waste alot of paper trimming it or I crop alot depending on subject.

[arraga]

<p>Trim your paper <i>before</i> exposing it, with safety light, and use the trimmings as test strips. No waste.

[jano_lukac]

Errr.. I thought 35mm was by default a 2:3 ratio, so should work on 4x6 no prob.

 

Denis, few things come to mind. Most likely reason would be due to borderless prints. Assuming a digital minilab (no idea how traditional ones worked), to print all the way to the edge, the original photo needs to be slightly enlarged. Typically you get up to 1% cropped.. 3mm on each side sounds excessive though. If you can, try to get one set with borders, and one set borderless, and see if there's a difference (there hsould be).

 

The other thing might be inaccurate framlines in your viewfinder?

 

Finally, it just may be norm that the lab will not use the entire part of the negative?

 

Hope that helps,

Jano

[david_powell3]

frontier labs have the ability to turn auto-cropping off and use "full frame" printing. if you measure your 35mm negatives, however, you will find that they probably are not exactly 36x24mm...they're typically something like 36.3x23.6mm, which as you see is not an exact 3:2 ratio, so a full frame print of a 35mm frame will include some borders on the top and bottom of the image (on the frontier if you zoom out so the whole image fits on the paper, you see the sprocket holes of the film strip in the print).

 

and whoever said that bordered prints use more of the 35mm frame than borderless was correct. not sure how much exactly, but it's certainly visible when compared side by side.

[bill_tuthill]

Exact frame size depends on the camera, but both my Minolta SLR

and P&S cameras produce 35mm frames around 36.5 x 24.5 mm, not 23.5!

 

What do you tell the Frontier operator to get full-frame? I find

Frontiers crop much worse than Agfa (digi)minilabs.

[david_powell3]

bill, you're right. exact frame size depends on the particular camera used. sometimes bigger, sometimes smaller.

 

to print full frame on a frontier using version 6.0 of the software (don't know any other versions) you go to the "printing" menu and down to "full frame print." turn this on. also in the "printing" menu is "center-cropping" which must be turned on as well. this allows the operator to decrease the magnification, effectively zooming out, to whatever point desired. i've noticed that typically the top and bottom edges (i.e. sprocket holes) tend to be displayed on a print more than the gaps between individual frames, leading to my belief that most cameras shoot more that 36mm long and less than 24mm tall. this may be a false asumption however. it could be that the aspect ratio of the cropping box on the frontier is not exactly 3:2. i don't know any way to find out.

 

 

note that "free cropping" cannot be enabled when doing "full frame print." only "center cropping" must be turned on. gotta love fuji's unintuitive software.

 

hope that helps!

[mph]

If it's any consolation, my local Walgreens has the opposite problem. Most of my prints come back with a dark band along one of the long edges, from the unexposed part of the negative. At least I don't see sprocket holes!