Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 1997/05/30
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]>We should get one of the wire service photo editors on here about sacanning >colour negs, as that is all that Canadian Press, Associated Press and Reuters >use to-day. So every colour photograph you see from any wire and most major >dailies around the world come from colour neg film. Hello Ted, In my former life I shot for the now defunct United Press International, and the newspaper I worked for prior to that was one of the first with the Leafax neg transmitter. It is true that the color negs work better for scanning from these devices. The contrast range is easier for theses scanners to handel. Also, at least on the older scanners, you could even get away with an underexposed image (slightly underexposed worked better than over). You could place a blank strip of film with the under neg and increase density to get the better scan. You had to place a blank neg strip in the machine when scanning the trans films to flatten out the contrast range. I am talking about the old (this was 5-7 years ago) Leaf 35 transmitter. The newerIIID's and Mac Powerbook/Nikon scanner bundels probably work better than those things did. You could not tell any difference in the color negs we scanned using the leaf and the chromes scanned on the drum scanner, but then agian we are talking NEWSPAPER reproduction here-almost any thing looks ok. By the way the Associated Press doesn't even use film any more they use a digital camera back mounted on a Nikon N90 back with a PICMA card to store the images. I have seen those guys litterally transmitt from their seats when covering the CMA (Country Music Association) awards show here in Nashville using the Mac powerbook with a cell phone!! Mark Humphrey (the local AP shooter) is a freind of mine and he said he has not shot film in well over a year. Now having said all of the above--the magazine firm I now shoot for uses only slide film, and our printer gets much better results from slide film. Also when I do a shoot for Black Star it is always on Chrome. I think this is more because there is no question to what the color should be in a photo. If you use gels or whatever it will be what you wanted in the pix-not what the printer/scanner opperator wanted in the photo. Of course when it goes to press they can totally screw that up!! I know of no newspapers/wireservices who still shoot chrome or black&white films. Everything on color neg transmit in color and the local papers can output in B&W if they want it that way. All photos now are transmitted into a computer in the newsrooms...no more laserphotos. At least I guess Reuter, AFP, and CP do this as the AP got rid of the laser fax machines years ago. Those things don't even work with their current system of photo delivery. Sorry to ramble so long on an off topic subject. By the way I have had slides made from negs also, and while not cheap they are cheaper than an 8x10 print and will scan better because light passes through the image as opposed to a reflective source like a print. Harrison McClary hmphoto@delphi.com http://people.delphi.com/hmphoto