On Screen V Prints

I took delivery of a large quantity of A3 prints from my local lab, Loxley Colour, which arrived in under 24 hrs at their standard RM 1st Class rate. The prints are conventional photographic prints on Fuji Pro paper.

Some observations, pictures taken with my K20d at 800 ISO in tricky theatre lighting conditions where high ISO noise was apparent in the shadows on screen is non-existent on a beautifully sharp print.

Pictures taken with a *istDS at 1600ISO in similar conditions are perfectly acceptable but were worrying on-screen.

Which just goes to show what a waste of time pixel peeping is.

A picture scanned by myself from a TRI-X neg. at 400ASA taken with an MX with 40mm M lens is much grainier than an equivalent size print made by the old neg/pos/enlarger etc process. I like grain, however an image from the DS and 40mm LTD and converted to mono at A3 shows no grain or noise at all.

Curiously the film originated images are absolutely neutral in colour tone whereas the digital are noticeably warmer, as if they had been printed on a 'warmer' paper. Looking at the graphs for both files I can see no indication of colour in either of them.

Any thoughts?

Is it possible that the printer machine / operator is applying automatic noise reduction to your files? In the theatre shots I imagine there would be some very dark blacks, so targeted noise reduction could easily be applied to the shadow areas without having an adverse effect on sharpness of other parts of the images.

Online printing services offer their 'Image Enhancements' procesing, by default often, and if you have carried out your own PP then you can deselect this. Maybe this occurs in the print shop as well.

I use an Epson flatbed scanner, and the software has settings to reduce grain - I think they call it 'Ice' technology. But I have generally found scans of negs to reproduce and emphasise films grain, sometimes to nice effect, if only because its different to our digital images. But the price is paid in extra softness, and then its a losing battle as compensating sharpening starts to degrade the quality.

I think we spend too much time scrutinising images at high levels of magnification on screen.

Not sure about 'image enhancement' since I uncheck all the boxes in the online order process. I dont bother with grain reduction during scanning either - it looks mushy.

I wonder whether reflected v. transmitted light may be an issue too :

If they are conventional photographic prints (i.e., light transmitted onto paper and developed the old fashioned way), maybe the printing process has an impact as well? It is difficult to say really without trying various things and making a formal comparison.

I agree with Ken that we may spend too much time pixel peeping. I shot slides for years and projected them onto a big screen and never stood there wondering about the corner sharpness of my M28/2.8... If an image was soft it was more likely I was trying to handhold something in very low light (not usual with 64ASA slide film) or I had just mucked up the focusing.

K.

Printing is very crude All sorts of tricks are used
to simulate 16M Colours. A monitor can display these directly
and exactly.

See some of the links in the Resolution Thread.

Bear in mind that not many people bother with printing and
the screen is the final result for a lot of shots.

Algi, this is photographic printing.

I always say this to my brother when he is moaning about how bad (noise, grain etc)his shots look on his computer screen - "print one off and then see how it looks". Monitors can make our digital pics look harsh.

This is only true if you print most of your work.

If mostly it's only ever seen on a computer screen, and for most people this is increasingly the case, then you have to do what you have to do.

It's no good saying to people that it looks Ok when printed, if it looks pants on the screen, and that's the only place they're going to look at it

Fair point but if I have clients looking at an online gallery they are viewing at images around 800 pixels on the long side and no opportunity for close examination.

Sure - you want them to buy the prints which is fair enough.

Horses for courses, really.

I totally agree with you Ken. Who looks at their images at 100% on a computer screen, other than during editing? Printed at a reasonable size or reduced to a normal web size (1000, 800 pixels), the grain just isn't an issue.

Colour noise / mottling can be an issue, but chroma noise can be hit hard in post processing without making the image mushy.

Look at a scan of supposedly fine-grained ISO100 film, and the grain is quite prominent when viewed at 100%, but you know it will still make a great print.

Enprints off my Kodak 110 camera were indistinguishable from
those taken on my Pentax K2..... so much in fact that I sold
the K2, went on holiday with the proceeds and did everything
on the Kodak 110 which also had a zoom as a bonus

Colour noise = Chroma noise

Luminance NR is the one that produces a mushy image if too much is applied