It is very plain to see. Not entirely the fault of film, my friend.
Prepping, colourimetrics, profiling, inter-image profile and corrections... you are missing a heap, and this is in my view the reason for your persistent poor results. Very high quality prints are not achievable with simple desktop scanners, nor if done cheaply, or by an operator with limited or next to no experience or knowledge of what he/she is doing, at the scanner and/or at the print step. It is not an overnight, one-hit-and-I'm-there job. Never was and never will be.
RA-4 and inkjet prints, either and both have their own followers, provide undeniably excellent quality print results from analogue and digital (especially analogue). Both require their own, individual metrics set up to achieve the best results for printing. What would have thought of that?
To a large degree, the quality of the input image — the photograph you took, also plays a big role: think of the things that are obviously wrong, or "might" be wrong: images high or low in contrast, poorly exposed, casted, excessively grains, poorly processed... all manner of things, can impart their own problems that no scanner nor skilled and experienced operator will fix, not least the home hobbyist battling demons of frustration and angst.
For many, the to digital results in tears. For me, it results in passing so many Fail scores at adjudications that, really, there should be mandatory film-to-digital transition courses to teach people how to be a photographer, and not a blind and imprecise spectator holding a fancy camera. Remember also that a good photograph is always created in the mind's eye, first. If you don't get what you want with any camera, analogue or digital, where do you think the problem might lie...?
Anything potentially valuable in this post was lost in masturbatory pontificating. There was way too much of this rubbish the last three pages of this thread from seemingly perfect film photographers who I suspect are just over the hill and enamored with their own experiences.
I'm done with film.
in Medium Format
Posted
Anything potentially valuable in this post was lost in masturbatory pontificating. There was way too much of this rubbish the last three pages of this thread from seemingly perfect film photographers who I suspect are just over the hill and enamored with their own experiences.