Re: [Leica] can't beat the minilab

[Alan Ball <AlanBall@csi.com>]

Mark Rabiner wrote:
> Yea, but the minute you walk out the door the Techno geek you entrusted
> your film to is replaced on his/her lunch break with a guy/gal who was
> working at McDonalds the day before but was fired because of an
> overabundance of piercings.(Studs through nose Etc). 

Mark,

Wow ! You really HATE them ! Where i go, I am never confronted to such
changes of guards. And I do not care if the clerks wear piercings or
not. Piercings, tatoos, shaved hair,  dreadlocks, hawaiian shirts or
Armani suits have nothing to do with the abilities and the goodwill of
people. And I have been fired from McDonalds when I was a student,
though I was not pierced: my hair was too long. I have a lot of respect
for those who survive there, and even more respect for those who resist
that mould. But this is off-topic.

> You put your masterpiece of German Artful Engeneering multi thousand
> dollar but otherwise priceless lens and a Camera of the same quality and
> cost and shoot a once in a lifetime event and what do you end up with: Snapshots.

Absolutely false conclusion. 

First, you'd have a hard time defining 'snapshots'. Then, if you define
them negatively and by content, 'snapshots' remain 'snapshots' weither
they end up as 4x5 cardboard mounted Velvia slides, hand masked
Ilfochrome enlargements or fibre-based black and white selenium toned
framed prints.

If you define 'snapshots' by a lack of processing quality, then I must
contradict your judgement: in the C41 color field,  NOTHING condemns the
minilab process to produce a quality level that would remain below
industrial or even hand tweaked quality levels. The only objective
limitation of the minilab is the maximum print size, which depends on
the hardware that is used. The subjective limitations are related to the
personnality of the operators, the attention to manipulation and to
keeping the place clean, the level of maintenance of the machines and
the regular updating of the channels. Technically, nothing prevents the
operators from tweaking the settings till YOU are satisfied with the
final print.

Now, judging by your following statement, you are maybe arguing that the
whole C41 color chain is good only for "Minilux, point and shoot, Rollei
35" images, whatever that means.

In the real world, that is simply not true. C41 is being used for a very
wide array of professional applications. The quality level of the C41
negative competes easily with the quality level of slides from ISO 100
up. A C41 neg is also often easier to scan than a very high res/high
contrast/high saturation slide. This is important for the whole
pre-press process. 

The prints from the C41 chain are very often BETTER than the prints that
are made from slides, for well known reasons related to the contrast
management discrepancies between slide and paper. 

Having said all that, I must stress that I do 90 pct of my private usage
color work on Velvia. Where high quality glass shines in an obvious way
(same for K25 and K64). 

But when I know I'm going to sell or give enlargements, I use C41 color,
200 ISO Royal Gold or 800 ISO Superia, processed by my favourite
minilab. It provides reliable, fast, repeatable, high quality
enlargements that get distributed by my customers in press folders or
end up being scanned for their media (even if slides and negs are
objectively a better media to scan than prints). I do not know if Leica
glass makes a real difference there, but it sure does not do any harm
;-)


Alan

> It's a guilty pleasure that I just wouldn't talk up. I'm clobbering you
> on this but I really do feel strongly about it.
> A Minilux, a point and shoot, a Rollei 35, all feed the minilab, quick
> and dirty instant gratification. But our M and R Gems deserve better.
> They create our body of work. They deserve a contact sheet. They deserve
> slides which come back in two hours with no scratches or twinkie
> remnants and can be instantly projected as big as your house or
> temporarily put in those cardboard pages with the vinyl protectors.
> Anything but snapshots which at their best reduce all imagery to the
> lowest common denominator.


> You've got a point about scanning not being an instant barrel of monkeys
> but the answer is not the minilab, there are other options, some just as instant.