Obviously slides are the way to go if you want maximum sharpness and color saturation. However, there is no lab (that I have found) that can produce prints from slides that come anywhere close to matching the quality of a projected image. Color balance is off, sharpness is reduced, and the whole picture just looks bad. I have paid extra at several shops (national chains as well as local) for slide-to-print, rather than intranegative, printing, with universally poor results.

I own a photo-quality printer; will a film scanner give me the quality I'm looking for? Which one? Does anyone know of a lab that produces original quality prints? Thanks.

-- Josh Bartel (bartel@leland.stanford.edu), October 22, 1999

Answers

Josh, it depends on the slide, but generally speaking, any print will fall short of what you see on the slide. You are converting a medium that passes light into one that reflects light. The reflectance of the paper simply does not have the dynamic range that can be achieved in the slide.

I have had very good luck with a company called Slide Printer in Denver. They are very reasonable, fast, and the quality is very good. While I have been very happy with my Epson 1200 prints, they certainly not higher in quality than a good conventional print. The only advantage may be that after scanning the slide you can manipulate the image to shift color, change contrast, etc. before printing.

-- Steve (milwaukeechrome@aol.com), October 22, 1999.

"While I have been very happy with my Epson 1200 prints, they certainly not higher in quality than a good conventional print. "

I would not take the advantages of the photo darkroom lightly. Not only can you accomplish those features that were listed, but you can crop and merge images along with hundreds of other manipulations. A lot of mediocre print images can be change to very good photos with a little session in the darkroom. A good color lab is beyond most amateurs pocket book, but there are several excellant programs to manipulate images. However it does take some effort to not only learn how to use these programs, but also to produce the desired result.

DaveClark@mail.com

-- dave clark (daveclark@mail.com), October 23, 1999.

This isn't exactly an answer, but it offers an interesting alternative for special shots: Back print film.

This is a product like a transparency offered by several third party ink and paper vendors. The idea is that you print reversed on the back side of this film and then backlight it, preferrably through a white plastic diffuser or even paper. The results can be quite pleasing, and are similar to slide viewing, but the print can be the size of a normal print(or up to a full page) rather than a tiny slide. Since they're printed on the back side, they're pretty well protected from people who like to touch... :-)

It might be something to consider for your better efforts. You could build a simple frame with diffuser and light source and simply swap back-prints in and out as you liked. A dimmer would give you complete control over brightness. You could even construct a small portable unit.

Have fun! Contact me if you want to try this, I have some ideas about it that I haven't gotten to try out yet. :-) If anyone really likes this idea let me know, it has commercial possibilities and I have most of the design worked out. It'd make a cheap portable viewer for digitally rendered images.

-- Gerald Payne (gmp@francorp.francomm.com), October 23, 1999.

Being a Trojan, I probably shouldn't suggest this, or at least I should leave off the warnings. Try asking on Photonet about a good lab in your area. There should be some denizens of the Bay Area that can suggest a lab that can do what you need. If not local they can also suggest mail-order labs. You should be able to better locally were face to face discussion orf results is possible. Unless you are absolutely flameproof, rephrase your question to simply asking about good local labs. Before asking on the forum, check the "articles" and do a "search" for topics, city names, etc. Some of them find abusing newcomers to their forum to be realy more fun than answering questions. Having said that, here's the url: http://photo.net/photo/ That's the main one. The discussion you want is "Original Q&A" A little research goes a long way before plunking down bucks for a film scanner. That scanner will set you back quite a few Ilfochrome prints.

-- Craig Gillette (cgillette@thegrid.net), October 24, 1999.