( In response to all this talk about optical vs digital prints, film is dead, etc. )
Here's an area which you'd figure digital would have helped tremendously but which seems to still be a big problem... You'd think by now that anywhere which takes a digital image in sRGB and produces a digital print on the spot would more or less have its colors and contrast optimized such that 255 is white, 0 is black, and skin tones look human.
Take an sRGB image, put it onto a CD, and go around to all the various printing kiosks and order some 4x6s. Amazing variance in results. Whites which go blue, blacks which go green, saturation and contrast cranked way up, colors which are more yellow, cyan, or red than the other machine at the next place, etc.
I had the very same digital file printed in both 5x7 and 8x10. The 8x10s seemed ok, but the 5x7s produced on the very same Frontier machine at the very same time came out too green. The only difference seems to be the paper sheets themselves. Perhaps these age?
The same images at one place with one brand of dye sub came out super saturated and another place with another brand of dye sub came out too yellow.
Most everyone cranks out the contrast such that a wedding dress or a tuxedo lose a lot of detail. I made some test images with gray scales to determine where the black and white disappear into oblivion, and decided with this one Frontier machine that all images should have their histograms scaled to fit between 20 and 235. Anything below 20 is solid black, and above 235 is solid white, when printed.
These are all digital output machines. You'd think at least the dye-sub places would be totally consistant with each other, since their chemicals are dry, but you get wildly different results depending on who made the kiosk printer.
One bizzare thing is, many digicams have 'vivid' saturation modes on them, but then the images has its contrast cranked up even MORE when it is printed. Hyper color and blasted details.
Brides don't understand why buying prints from the photographer might be a good idea, and even when I explain it to them they still choose my CD only pricing option to get more images than my CD and prints option to get actual 4x6 prints. I reduce the contrast on their files so that they at least have a chance of getting a decent print. I also give them a few samples so that they can see what a decent print should look like. I can also direct them to a few better machines to have the prints made. I tell them to make a few samples before placing a big order. I cannot control what their relatives do when they get copies of the CDs.
Looking forward to the day when you could bring an image anywhere and get more or less the same results...
Brian
http://www.bdphotographic.com
