I've only developed B&W film myself, so I don't know how similar the rules are with C-41 process. But in black and white the agitation affects contrast. Possibly your sharpness issue is actually a contrast one. I also know that temperatures being off and over/under exposure to the chemicals can affect contrast. I had a big problem with blowing out the highlights that I first thought was over exposure in the camera, but turned out to be over exposure in the negative development tank. I learned to look at the shadow detail in the negatives to tell the difference. Not always but generally if you can see some slight shadow detail in the negative the camera exposed it correctly. If the shadows were ok and the highlights were totally black with no detail, it usually meant I goofed in the development. I've had fairly good luck with most minilabs for just developing the negatives only though as I too scan everything at this point. The only place I consistently have problems with negatives is at Walmart. I get a lot of spots on them as well as scratches. That was not a dig at a certain list member either, honest that's just my experience. It's only about $.75 more to get them done elsewhere though so I'm not too worried.
Regarding a comment made about film scans not printing as well as original digital images, that problem ended for me with my grain surgery plug-in for Photoshop. I can now get the detail from the film with noiseless digital. I can only compare this with my 4MP digital presently though, so not necessarily a fair general statement I suppose. I had Walmart scan a couple of roles for me and got the cd, but was totally unhappy with that. It was way too low of resolution and the scans were very poor quality as compared to my Dual Scan III, which is not really a high res scanner and has a budget price to boot. One of these days I need to try taking my digital files in to be printed and see how that works out. Thus far I'm only printing at home in my inkjets. Dave -----Original Message----- From: Butch Black [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Saturday, June 12, 2004 7:18 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: Film and Development George wrote: I've received some pretty dirty stuff back from the local discount place, but never anything optically fuzzy. I've since moved my business to another place. Help me understand, since I've only developed black and white negs and color slides at home. What would cause the sharpness of color negatives to degrade during the developing process? My totally uniformed guess would be that the process would have to be off pretty far to have an effect on the emulsion. Baring chemistry completely out of wack you can't affect sharpness. What you can affect is contrast and acutance. A low contrast negative with low acutance will not look as sharp when printed as a normal contrast negative. I suppose that very dirty stabilizer could leave a film on the film that could affect the sharpness a bit. The in control range in C-41 is wide enough that you could see a difference between a negative processed in a machine running at minimum control, especially low LD and HD - LD (contrast), and a machine running with those plots near the high end of in control. I try to keep my machines (both film and paper processor) running between mid way and max control. The trade off is that film shot under very contrasty lighting can be a PITA to print. Hope that helps. Butch Each man had only one genuine vocation - to find the way to himself. Hermann Hesse (Demian)
