ProcessingPrinting and Film Concerns

[jamesw]

Hi --

Can anyone recommend a good mail-order processing/contact sheet/hand printing lab in the UK?
In the past I've used Sky, or Metro in London. They're very good, but their mail order process is not very well implemented.

As an aside, is anyone else concerned about our choice to use film (as opposed to digital) imminently disappearing? I am.

James

 

[wang]

http://www.zeiss.de/C12567A8003B58B9?Open

This is how the company Zeiss think about film. They are still making products for film based photography. Yesterday I saw the new black Zeiss Ikon camera in M mount.

There is still a long way to go before digital could replace film completely. The experience of mine scanning film tells me there is still quite a lot not achievable with digital. In order to scan the film successfully, you have to scan it twice with the digital scanner. The one I am using is Minolta 5400. First you scan the dark part of the film followed by the bright part. In the end you overlap the two layers by photoshop.

The experience does suggest digital scanners and camera do have a reduced dynamic range compared with film. digital images most often lacks details in the dark part of the image but you can compensate by scanning the film twice to get all the informations.

Images from digital cameras also have a reduced colour resolution when compared to fim. As you know each light sensing unit in digital sensor can only sense one of the primary colour. Its leads to loss of colour information when the blue colour hits the green sensor, for ex&le, leading to loss of colour resolution.

Digital image can easily overtake film by increasing the number of pixels, but it is only in one aspect of the image quality which is the resolution of fine details. However, there are still important aspects of the image and film is still holding the ground filmly. Even though I am no expert in image technology, I can tell you that film will stay and there is still a long way before digital can overtake film completely.

 

[wang]

http://www.alpenglowimaging.com/film-v-digital.htm

Here is another site which gives expert opinion on the difference. Enjoy !

 

[jamesw]

Joseph, That link doesn't work, just takes me to the index page, could you check again please? Thanks! James