Hand prints from colour negatives?

[skysh4rk]

Hi all,

I've recently tried printing some of the photos from my honeymoon in China and I've run into a bit of a problem. I can't seem to find a printer/paper combination at any lab that can handle the vivid reds that I get from Fuji Pro 160NS (the reds are out of gamut and appear very flat in prints).

As I've been googling around trying to look for a solution, I've noticed a couple of places that offer hand printing for colour negatives and it's left me a bit curious: What are the advantages of hand prints from colour negatives? Colour reproduction? Dynamic range? Print quality?

I would assume that I've only ever seen machine-processed prints from colour negatives, so I'd be interested to hear what the the possible advantages or disadvantages of hand prints might be.

Now, I don't think that this is an overall solution to my original colour printing problem, as hand printing wouldn't be appropriate for all of my photos, but for some of my better photos, particularly those from the Great Wall, I'm wondering if this would be worth exploring.

 

[s162216]

I noticed your other thread about this, but one question I have is did you scan them yourself or get the lab to do it? The reason I ask is that colour negative film scanning is always going to be fairly subjective regarding colour balance, and the NS version of Pro 160 is supposed to be 'normally saturated' and designed for portraiture which makes me think that the reds and other colours should not perhaps be as saturated as your scan shows. Pulling your 'Senado Square' picture into Photoshop elements shows that red channel highlights are clipping over most of the subjects red clothing, and the blue/green channel highlights are also clipping in a couple of other areas so I get the impression that it might be your scan being the problem rather than it originating on the negative itself.

Traditional optical printing does have the advantage of showing the original saturation of the film as this is something thats difficult to alter optically (hence why you used to get saturated and natural versions of a lot of pro films), so I would say try it and see what you think. Plus I would rescan the above negative and adjust the levels to avoid the clipping in each channel.

 

[skysh4rk]

I noticed your other thread about this, but one question I have is did you scan them yourself or get the lab to do it? The reason I ask is that colour negative film scanning is always going to be fairly subjective regarding colour balance, and the NS version of Pro 160 is supposed to be 'normally saturated' and designed for portraiture which makes me think that the reds and other colours should not perhaps be as saturated as your scan shows.

Yes, you're very right about the subjective nature of the colours from C-41, that's why I've been using UK Film Lab as they get far more consistent results in this regard than I do and I like their results.

A couple of months back, I had shot a few test rolls with 160NS and found that I could still get good skin tones, but a little added zing to the reds if I overexposed it between 1-2 stops (if scanned by UK Film Lab), so that's what I've been doing.

Pulling your 'Senado Square' picture into Photoshop elements shows that red channel highlights are clipping over most of the subjects red clothing, and the blue/green channel highlights are also clipping in a couple of other areas so I get the impression that it might be your scan being the problem rather than it originating on the negative itself.

Hmmm... I've just double checked the original scan and the jpeg version that I posted on Flickr and there's no clipping in any channel according to Adobe Lightroom. The only time Lightroom says there is a problem is when I soft proof for print and then it shows me that the reds are out of gamut for my selected printer and paper.

I'm not sure what is happening if your copy of Elements is showing clipping. Monitor or colour space differences, perhaps?

Traditional optical printing does have the advantage of showing the original saturation of the film as this is something thats difficult to alter optically (hence why you used to get saturated and natural versions of a lot of pro films), so I would say try it and see what you think. Plus I would rescan the above negative and adjust the levels to avoid the clipping in each channel.

The thing is that I like the colours from my scans, so perhaps hand printing wouldn't be right in some situations, but maybe I should give it a go just to see what happens.

 

[s162216]

When I dragged it into camera raw (as Elements doesn't directly have clipping warnings when editing), it didn't show any clipping warnings either, but as you can see in the attached screenshot just a simple clipping preview in levels (making no adjustments) shows several areas in the red channel as clipped (as so the monitor will make no difference). It might be nothing for all I know though (EDIT: just to point out that the JPEG compression seems to screw up the screenshot as in the original every bit of red is the same brightness etc and theres no soft sort of look, a TIFF version that I tried showed it as it should).

 

[skysh4rk]

When I dragged it into camera raw (as Elements doesn't directly have clipping warnings when editing), it didn't show any clipping warnings either, but as you can see in the attached screenshot just a simple clipping preview in levels (making no adjustments) shows several areas in the red channel as clipped (as so the monitor will make no difference). It might be nothing for all I know though (EDIT: just to point out that the JPEG compression seems to screw up the screenshot as in the original every bit of red is the same brightness etc and theres no soft sort of look, a TIFF version that I tried showed it as it should).

Hmmm... That's very weird. I'm guessing that it must have something to do with the JPEG compression then?

Well, putting colour issues to the side for the moment, would there be other advantages/disadvantages for hand printing?

 

[strax]

I know this doesn't really answer your question about hand printing but have you thought about approaching the printing from another angle? As you like the results that ukfilmlab have given you, why dont you just get their jpeg printed?

Obviously the size of scan you got from them will limit you a bit but it wouldn't cost too much to use online printing from some company to try it out.

The other day I conducted an experiment with a couple of my scans. I got one of my 35mm pano shots from my Bronica 35mm pano back and a 120 velvia both printed to 16x12 to see how they would turn out. I was pleasantly surprised, the 35mm print was soft but still pretty acceptable. The velvia print was much better, pretty sharp and certainly it would be hard to tell from a print from a digital camera. Pixel peeping both files before printing had me of the opinion that the result wouldn't have been as good. A lesson learned for me.

 

[skysh4rk]

I know this doesn't really answer your question about hand printing but have you thought about approaching the printing from another angle? As you like the results that ukfilmlab have given you, why dont you just get their jpeg printed?

Obviously the size of scan you got from them will limit you a bit but it wouldn't cost too much to use online printing from some company to try it out.

The other day I conducted an experiment with a couple of my scans. I got one of my 35mm pano shots from my Bronica 35mm pano back and a 120 velvia both printed to 16x12 to see how they would turn out. I was pleasantly surprised, the 35mm print was soft but still pretty acceptable. The velvia print was much better, pretty sharp and certainly it would be hard to tell from a print from a digital camera. Pixel peeping both files before printing had me of the opinion that the result wouldn't have been as good. A lesson learned for me.

I have printed the JPEGs from the UK Film Lab scans. The quality of the scans is great, so the prints look really sharp up to 12x12; it's just that I can't find a lab that has a printer/paper combination that can handle the saturated reds from the scans. I had started a separate thread regarding that here: http://www.talkphotography.co.uk/threads/out-of-gamut-reds-any-way-of-printing.520264/

Putting my issue with reds to the side for a moment, the main thing I'd like to know is: what are the advantages/disadvantages of a hand print from a colour negative compared to printing the scans?

 

[robhooley167]

Putting my issue with reds to the side for a moment, the main thing I'd like to know is: what are the advantages/disadvantages of a hand print from a colour negative compared to printing the scans?

I would guess (I haven't got exact figures to hand) the resolution of optical printing is higher than that of an inkjet printer. However with lightjet printing I'm not so sure, as it uses optical paper too, so having it done by hand wouldn't have any advantages really. (Probably)

 

[skysh4rk]

I would guess (I haven't got exact figures to hand) the resolution of optical printing is higher than that of an inkjet printer. However with lightjet printing I'm not so sure, as it uses optical paper too, so having it done by hand wouldn't have any advantages really. (Probably)

I might have to give it a go, if only just to compare.

 

[pingu666]

could the ink simply not go red enough? On the printer I mean..

 

[skysh4rk]

could the ink simply not go red enough? On the printer I mean..

The print lab has contacted me and said that the gamut of the paper is the limiting factor with regard to the reds in this case.

I should clarify to say that my interest in hand prints is not simply to get past the issues with the reds, although that was initially what lead me to consider hand printing, but I'm curious to understand what benefits hand printing may or may not offer over prints of scanned negatives.