I've been having great luck with Ritz USA minilabs with Fuji Frontier printers, which are fancy digital printers.

But here's my question that the workers at Ritz can't answer to my satisfaction and Fuji's site doesn't really explain: Is this system optical or digital? I glean from Fuji that it scans in the neg, but I'm not sure if it prints with a print head or exposes paper with light. I'm guessing the latter.

Anyone know? The prints are sure sharp.

Cheers,

-- David Carson (dave@davidcarson.com), May 24, 2002

Answers

Looks digital to me, as you can see the "dots" all in a row under magnification. Look at a print with a 7x loupe.

-- Charles (cbarcellona@telocity.com), May 24, 2002.

It prints digitally. It's sometimes described as a "closed loop" system because it's not calibrated to a recognized standard but with a bit of trial-and-error the scans it produces (3000 dpi) may be used to print on other digital printers and files produced by other scanners may be used to print with the Frontier. Same for the Noritsu QS-2901.

-- Douglas Herr (telyt@earthlink.net), May 24, 2002.

I too have been quite pleased with Ritz places. One of things that's disheartening is that they're run by people who really don't know anything about traditional dark room photography. But, who needs it now?

As far as I can tell, Ritz develops and prints with wet chemistry- however the imaging is mediated digitally. So they develop the negs, then they essentially scan them in to their computer. The young, not always experienced folk at the machines then proview them on the screen, tweak them for light levels, and sometimes even sharpen them (which is why you sometimes see pixelation), and they get printed on photographic paper (ie, printed onto paper with photographic emulsion, not ink jet printed- I don't think, at least), which is processed, as in a dark room.

-- TS (tsesung@yahoo.com), May 24, 2002.

printed onto paper with photographic emulsion, not ink jet printed- I don't think, at least), which is processed, as in a dark room.

Correct. The lab I'm using has Fuji Crystal Archive in their Frontier.

-- Douglas Herr (telyt@earthlink.net), May 24, 2002.

DAvid:

I have been told by a guy who IS knowledgable abuot trad darkroom who now operates a Frontier machine, that the originals are scanned, then processed at the whim/discretion of the operator, then printed to (RA4) trad wet paper process,including Crystal Archive, using lasers and colour filteers at 400 DPI.

This needs, as noted above, magnification to see the dots. Just like lokking at a TV screen close up.

It is now my medium of choice for colour prints, eithe from slides or negs. Today I am trying a Photoshop toned monochrome print.

Cheers

-- RICHARD ILOMAKI (richardjx@hotmail.com), May 24, 2002.

How have people found their scanning services? I've gotten a couple photo CDs from Ritz, and they're okay- great for web publishing, but I imagine they're not the same quality or resolution of Kodak PhotoCDs. And, the Mac SW on them doesn't work. I just go in and find the jpegs that I want. Indeed, they're all jpegs- I thought was a more 'native' format, like TIFF, that's preferable.

Thoughts?

-- TW (tsesung@yahoo.com), May 25, 2002.

How have people found their scanning services?

The Frontier scans are 3000 dpi with a good dynamic range (I don't know what the numbers are aside from dpi) but the scan clips a bit off the edges. I find the scans significantly better than standard PhotoCD and depending on the skill of the operator as good as Pro PhotoCD scans. The local lab (Sacramento) charges $10 per scan. These are written in whatever format I specify (TIFF, always) but the color profile info isn't stored with the file and to convert to your working profile you have to do a profile-to-profile conversion. I located and have the Frontier scanner profile for my Mac but I couldn't tell ya where I found it.

-- Douglas Herr (telyt@earthlink.net), May 25, 2002.

My Frontier-using lab files scans as bitmaps (bmp format, yes, readable for Macs and PCs likeweise), at € 1.28 per 14 Mb scan. None of my frequent typos: one euro 28 cents per fourteen megabyte scan from 35mm negative or slide. And the quality is pretty good at least.

-- -- (Oliver.Schrinner@campus.lmu.de), May 27, 2002.

If the Frontier machines scan the image before printing, does it make any difference whether you use slide or print film?

-- Preston Merchant (merchant@speakeasy.org), May 28, 2002.

While I got execellent 4x6 prints form local Fuji Frontier printer but feel much disappointed to see my 8x12 prints from same Frontier system. they were too grainy than what I received before where they sent out to one of the Kodak lab. Anyone try bigger prints than 8x12 yet from the Frontier system? The manager I talked to claims that many people think their 8x12 prints are sharper than before. Any Comments please. Thanks.

-- kenny chiu (gokugo31@hotmail.com), May 28, 2002.

Preston, No, aside from the usual issues of latitude, and hence printability.

While I was in Japan the Fuji lab I used charged the same amount for prints from either source. But this is not uniform practice, and some labs charge more for prints from slides.

The prints from slides, incidentally, are very, very good and easily comparable to most custom analog printing, or better, if properly done.

-- Mani Sitaraman (bindumani@pacific.net.sg), May 28, 2002.