Thanks William!
Bill
----- Original Message ----- From: "William Robb" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <pentax-discuss@pdml.net>
Sent: Saturday, May 07, 2005 11:41 AM
Subject: Re: Digital profligacy
----- Original Message ----- From: "Graywolf"
Subject: Re: Digital profligacy
The young lady at the local Wal-Mart Minilab as so happy. She told me she had a hard time getting all the yellow out of my photo of a tan hat...
Wal-Mart print: http://meanderings.graywolfphoto.com/_images/walmart-hat.jpg
Uncorrected scan of negative: http://meanderings.graywolfphoto.com/_images/my-block.jpg
Sometimes a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. Luckily I only wanted a scan to send to the guy who had given me the hat to show how it had cleaned up.
Both images are uncorrect scans. Note how off the exposure looks in the print. The negative shows that I did better than that. In a way these two images are a pro-digital argument. But bad printing is not a real problem as I could have insisted that they redo the print correctly. If I do not so insist it is my problem, not theirs. It does show how hard it is to evaluate exposure from minilab prints by inexperienced photographers. With digital however it is just as hard. An experienced photographer can read the negative and know who is at fault. How do you do that with digital, there are so many varitables involved before you can see a readable image.
This brings up the interesting concept that the photo finisher should what the inside of your house looks like, and should automatically know what colour things are, given no references regarding it.
Her exposure is off by a couple of buttons (too light), but there is nothing in the scene to tip off the printer regarding what the correct colour should be.
One of the things we deal with on an ongoing basis is the tan wall syndrome. It's not unusual for us to get negatives (especially) that have no colour reference for us to key on to make a colour judgement, so we make a nice looking print, and get accused of being idiots because the walls of the room are the wrong colour.
William Robb
