LED vs. traditional prints. Which is better?

[manrico_scremin1]

I've done quite a bit of mountain landscape photography but up to now

it has always been strictly 35mm slides. Now that I have a Mamiya 7

I'm discovering the world of colour prints. (Commercial only; I

haven't made the leap to the darkroom yet.)

 

I shoot Velvia. I took what I thought were a couple of good

transparencies to what is supposed to be a good lab to get 11x14

prints and was very disapointed with the results. Poor colour and

resolution. I know the colour can be fixed but I was surprised that

the detail wasn't there. Then I realized that what they did was to

make 35mm internegatives from my 6x7 transparencies before making the

prints! Lesson learned.

 

My question, before spending more money needlessly, is about

commercial printing. A couple of large pro labs here do all their

custom printing using Kodak LED Digital Printers. I don't know what

they use for scanners. Will this lead to better results than

traditional printing from 6x7 transparencies which seems to be less

common at least here in Vancouver, Canada? The maximum size they do

using LED is 20x30.

 

Also, any comments about super gloss vs. regular paper? (Mountain

landscapes: mountains, trees, glaciers, lakes, moss, etc.) Super

gloss is quite a bit more expensive.

 

I thought I'd ask the Forum before going out and making some

experiments myself.

[mark d.]

Manrico,

 

Do yourself a favor and send your slides to the Light Room in Berkeley, CA.

http://www.lightroom.com

Make sure to ask for a contrast mask if it's needed. They do a simply phenomenal job making Ilfochromes and it will cost you 1/3rd of the price of a drum scan/Lightjet print.

[dlabrosse]

Manrico,

 

The previous poster advises to send your film to California. Before you go rushing off shiping your precious trannies to CA, hear this. In Vancouver there are enough good labs to get the work done. Ilfochrome or Lightjet.

 

I would recommend trying "The Lab" (yes that's its name - "The Lab on West 1st" in the phone book) ph is 604 876-1908. Address is 108 West 1st Ave Vancouver, just across the street from the Vancouver City works yard in False Creek (east of the Cambie St Bridge).

 

They have an excellent lightjet process that in my mind is superior to Ilfochrome or interneg printing. I've had some stunning work done from 6x7 trannies. The advantage to lightjet is that the Lab will match the look of your tranny. No more exaggerated contrast, no more lost highlight and shadow detail, no more loss of sharpness/grain from an interneg. In my opinion, and the opinion of almost all the local pros I've been in contact with, these results are superior to Ilfochrome.

 

Other good Vancouver Pro Labs to investiage are Gamma or Key Colour. George King does OK as well but they will want to interneg for sure. At least they do a 70mm interneg.

 

If you still want to print Ilfochrome, you can look up Graham Milne in North Van. Graham used to run a small Ilfochrome specialty lab on Cambie St near 20th but has since moved everything to his home. I used him quite a bit for a show I did 5 or 6 years ago. His work is top notch. Sorry I don't have contact info for him any more but if you call the BC CAPIC office, you might be able to track him down. Try www.capic.org

 

Hope this helps. BTW could you tell me the name of the lab that made a 35mm interneg froma MF tranny. I'll make sure ont to go there!

 

Regards,

Dominique

[scott_eaton]

Strong agreement with Dominique on this one. Reversal printing from slides has been dead and dying for a long time and the new digital procesess yield superior images from a wider range of slides than Ilfo/Cibachrome. Scanning your film digitally and printing onto better controlled C-type paper via LightJet/Lambda/Chromira/Kodak digital printers will yield better images than any conventional reversal process.

 

Both Kodak and Chromira make LED digital printers that are meant to compete with the more expensive Lambda and LightJet printers. The major difference I've seen is the LED based printers are a bit less sharp than the popular LightJet, but it's very doubtfull you'd notice in anything larger than a 8x10. Otherwise it's more up to the technique of the lab rather than the type of printer used for quality results. I strongly recommend using a lab that has a drum for scanning slides.

 

Fuji "Super-Gloss" is the trade name for Fujiflex paper. Basically it's Fuji's Crystal Archive paper in a polyester base that looks and feels just like a classic Cibachrome. I've been having negs printed on this stuff for years and it looks great. Colors drive extremely hard, yet be aware that contrast is higher than most photographic papers. If I were you I'd have a 8x10 made from a favorite slide first on a film you shoot most often to judge results rather than forking over a lot of $$$$ for a 20x30.

[joseph_albert]

How do the digital prints compare to Ciba/Ilfochromes in terms of archival quality?

[struan_gray]

Scott, have you digitally printed low-contrast images onto Fujiflex?

I can see that the high contrast is unavoidable in unmasked

conventional prints, but my bias in a properly calibrated digital

world would be to use the paper with the widest raw gamut and contrast

range and pick the subset that I wanted to use. The polyester base

has archival attractions too.

[miles_hecker]

In the last year I've become a convert to digital printing.

The quality of a Lighjet {or similar technology } 20" x 30" print made from my best 6x9 negative or transparency is astonishing. I can take out a 7x lupe and look at individual branches on trees hundreds of yards distant in my landscape shots. The range of tonality finally equals what you can see on the light table. The quality of the scan is the key. A drum scanner is only as good as the operator.

 

On a similar note, the technology has led me to shoot Provia 100F almost exclusively. The range of tonality and lack of grain is exquisite when digitally printed. If I want a Velvia look, I just boost saturation and contrast. I think in fact it would not be an exageration to say the days of ISO 100 negative film are numbererd at least in the world of nature photography. Thr Provia 100F has almost the same tonal range as any negative stock I've seen and is virtually grainless when scanned. Even the best 100 negative film has way more grain visible after scanning.

 

The super gloss paper is superior when viewed directly, but the visual difference when viewed behind glass is small. When viewed behind non glare glass it's non existent.

[scott_eaton]

<i>Thr Provia 100F has almost the same tonal range as any negative stock I've seen and is virtually grainless when scanned.</i><P>This is where we diverge a bit. I still do quite a bit of conventional C-type work from negs, and I hate to tell you this but a 6x7 neg printed to Crystal Archive or Fujiflex to 16x20 by a conventional printer that knows what he's doing is not going to differ a great deal from a digital print from a neg. I'm also not thrilled about Provia's (and Velvia's) weak shadow detail and tendency to turn all skin tones pink. Also, NPH or Reala will *destroy* any slide film when it comes to recording shadow detail or just raw dynamic range. Slide films on the other hand do a better job at spatial differences between colors which results in the much desired "glow" in digital color prints. Otherwise, I appreciate the common sense of using a more mellow slide film and manaully enhancing the saturation. Regretfully, many photogs are still shooting Velvia and driving digital technicians nuts. Kodak E100-VS is even worse behaved.<p>The real point here is the quality of images from slides compared to the clunky and over-rated conventional R-type process.<P> We also have two related problems. First, slides record shadow detail as very dense, near black dye that is very difficult to extract information from via conventional printing or home scanners. That's why drum scanners work so well with slides - they have the dynamic range to "punch-through" a slide and extract all the information. You can then put that digital information back together in a range that color paper likes rather than close your eyes and pray like printing cibachromes. Personally, I hate contrast masks and find them only a fix for a small range of slides.<P>The other side of this is that drum scanners usually "grain-up" neg film because all that extra dynamic recording capability exceeds the D-max of the neg and starts to define the grain structure in greater detail. My 8x10's from 120 negs off a Fuji Frontier blow away anything I've seen off a LightJet from any film, but that's because the Frontier has been tweaked to extract the best possible images from neg films.<P>Good point on mounting FujiFlex behind glass and actually seeing a difference. I still prefer clean glass and Fujiflex prints though.