| There are both objective and subjective
conditions which operate together, leading to your observation
that a loss of quality has occurred in making prints from
your slides. Let’s peruse the technical considerations
first. When any image is reproduced in the same medium, as
in a slide duplicate from you original slide, or in another
medium, as is the case in the making of a print, there is
a predictable generational loss of quality. The words "looks
as good" in your question, imply a comparison of quality
between the original image and the second generation print.
You will actually be seeing a third generation copy when your
print is made from an internegative. What you’re seeing
as quality is an aggregate of several qualities present in
the print. You will, no doubt, consider "sharpness"
to be one of the most important of these.
Perceived sharpness is affected by contrast and resolution,
both of which are always degraded during the printing process
by factors such as aberrations in the design and manufacture
of the enlarging lens, dust or dirt on the front or rear element
of that lens, dust and dirt on the slide, vibration in the
enlarger, focusing inaccuracy, glare or flare on the lens
(some of this sound familiar?), incorrect paper storage, reflection
or other fogging of the paper, contaminated, improperly mixed
or exhausted processing chemicals, improper washing of the
print... wanna hear more? Trust me—there’s more!
Loss of resolution in the print seen as loss of detail—and
loss of sharpness. Contrast degradation results in fewer gradations
of midtones and in darker shadows and brighter, maybe even
"blown out," highlights—all resulting in loss
of detail and sharpness. It gets harder to see just exactly
where the water ends and your shark begins!
When evaluating the quality of the slide against the print,
you must make color comparisons. Depending a lot on the printing
process and materials used, both color saturation and hue
will differ between images on the slide and on the print.
Contrast degradation can cause the "washed-out-color"
look typical of saturation loss. That beautiful violet soft
coral can be rendered blue in print. As a matter of fact,
color hue (what we think of as colors) can come back from
the lab in misrepresentations bordering on the metaphysical!
All this even with properly exposed prints—and prints
aren’t always properly exposed! There’s more,
Virginia.
So we’ve made a print by exposing the paper, which
is incapable of carrying nearly the information that slide
film can, with a degraded image derived from your slide and
projected over an area many, many times the size of the original,
diluting the detail present in the emulsion of the slide geometrically.
We then process the paper through a number of variable, but
hopefully within "tolerance," steps, each of which
is personally presided over by the Great Murphy Himself. The
print is then viewed—by reflected light—probably
at your closest reading distance. Light reflected from the
print’s surface is always accompanied by a lot of glare,
and viewing generally takes place in a well-lighted area with
stray light entering your eye. When you saw the slide, you
were either in a dark room or you were looking through a loupe—no
glare and no stray light. You are probably holding the print
in your hand as close as your eye ill focus, even if it is
a good-sized enlargement. This is hardly a fair comparison.
There is a prescribed viewing distance for each size enlargement,
generally considered to be about equal to the diagonal measurement
of the print. When viewed at the proper distance, a print’s
perceived quality increases.
Let’s return to your question and take a critical look
at the word lab. All labs are not created equal. If you send
your slide for printing via your local supermarket, drug,
or department store, you will probably get a "machine
print" back from the lab. These prints are run in large
batches and printed automatically, generally with only random
quality checks. The same person will probably never see both
your slide and your print. A generous appraisal of work produced
by these labs would be "inconsistent" at best. At
worst it may be "consistent": cheap prices—cheap
quality!
Photo stores offer service a notch higher on the quality
scale. You can request cropping and maybe even selective exposure
of the print. A human being will actually watch your slide
being printed and make some judgments and corrections. If
you’re lucky, that human may be experienced, skilled,
and maybe even give a damn about your enlargement. Prints
from these labs cost more and are generally a lot better,
depending on the individual lab.
If you are willing to up the ante, maybe several times up,
consider that a custom lab offers a much higher quality product.
This service is available at the lab premises or at photo
stores offering a choice of custom outlab service. You will
be encouraged to give detailed instructions, including cropping,
color shifts, color matching, retouching, selective exposure
adjustments(dodging and burning) to bring up shadow detail
or hold back highlight burnouts, and more. You may even discuss
your objectives with the printer—in person. These printers
are often photo hobbyists. They are virtually always experienced,
highly skilled professionals who not only care about their
work, but take pride in achieving the maximum quality possible
from your image. These labs routinely keep their equipment
immaculate, maintain tight control over their chemistry, and
generally run multiple tests from your slide before a final
print is made. You may be asked to approve a test print or
strip if a question exists. You can expect color to be close
to perfect in critical areas and to be very close throughout
the print, although balance between colors is not precisely
identical in film and print materials. You can, in fact, often
have a better color balance in the print than in the original
slide. You have virtually total control over composition,
and this can often yield a stunning printed image from an
easily overlooked slide.
Expect maximum sharpness, taking into account generational
loss. Great pains are taken to keep that SOB Murphy out of
the darkroom. Excellent lenses are focused on the grain of
the film and checked the instant before the print is made.
The simple fact is that the image is at its sharpest when
reflected off the scene, and it’s downhill from there
every step of the way. Every effort must be made to hang onto
each iota of quality from that point on. Custom labs are the
bulldogs of the photo processing industry.
We have just skated lightly over the surface of an iceberg
the size of the one that sunk the Titanic in considering this
subject. To sum it all up, expect some loss of sharpness and
detail in the print, exploit the advantages of control over
the image in the lab whenever possible, and use the bast lab
you can afford.
If prints are your real goal, consider using print film.
Kodak Ektar print film actually has higher resolving power
than current slide films, and a higher speed and better tonal
range in the bargain. It’s also more "goof proof"
at the taking end. Although slides have long been the standard
in the publication arena, as photography (post-production
at least) moves into the electronic age, and photo contributions
are digitized by computers and submitted on CDs, negative
films may come into full bloom. A push of a button can flip
a negative image to positive. But that’s a whole ‘nother
subject. A nice little additional bonus from using print film
for making a print, Virginia: You won’t have a slide
to compare it with.
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