200DPI LightJet Print

I decided to get a 6x7 transparency professionally scanned and printed by
my local pro lab.

I just got my 16x20 print back. It looks nice, but when examining the
print from 6-10 inches, I wasn't exactly blown away by the detail that I
believe exists in the Fuji Velvia transparency. The print is sharp and
looks great from a few feet away. The scan was $45 and the print was $35
for a total of $80.

I asked for more information. What I assumed was a drum scan wasn't.
They use a $39,000 Scitex flatbed scanner. The lab owner says it
outperformed their drum scanner so they got rid of it.

And the LightJet print was done at 200dpi (or it was scanned at 200dpi).
I believe the native resolution of all LightJets is 305dpi.

Does anybody have an idea how much better 300dpi looks for a
continuous-tone LightJet print?

Thanks

On Wed, 20 Apr 2005 00:51:23 GMT, pgg
wrote:

I decided to get a 6x7 transparency professionally scanned and printed by
my local pro lab.

I just got my 16x20 print back. It looks nice, but when examining the
print from 6-10 inches, I wasn't exactly blown away by the detail that I
believe exists in the Fuji Velvia transparency. The print is sharp and
looks great from a few feet away. The scan was $45 and the print was $35
for a total of $80.

I asked for more information. What I assumed was a drum scan wasn't.
They use a $39,000 Scitex flatbed scanner. The lab owner says it
outperformed their drum scanner so they got rid of it.


They're not necessarily wrong about that.
The Creo Scitex flatbeds (eg. Eversmart Pro)
are on par with most drum scanners in terms
of resolution. Even on eBay, these things
go for big bucks.


And the LightJet print was done at 200dpi (or it was scanned at 200dpi).
I believe the native resolution of all LightJets is 305dpi.

Does anybody have an idea how much better 300dpi looks for a
continuous-tone LightJet print?


I've compared LightJet at 305 dpi vs. Durst Epsilon
at 254 dpi, and there's not much difference.


rafe b.
http://www.terrapinphoto.com

pgg wrote:

I decided to get a 6x7 transparency professionally scanned and printed by
my local pro lab.

I just got my 16x20 print back. It looks nice, but when examining the
print from 6-10 inches, I wasn't exactly blown away by the detail that I
believe exists in the Fuji Velvia transparency. The print is sharp and
looks great from a few feet away. The scan was $45 and the print was $35
for a total of $80.


Get a pro cibachrome done and compare.. 200DPI doesn't sound like enough to
me. I'd never send a print at that rez in for printing.

--

Stacey

"PGG" wrote:

Get a pro cibachrome done and compare.. 200DPI doesn't sound like enough
to
me. I'd never send a print at that rez in for printing.

I'll do something different next time. I'm not gonna spend another $80 on
the same image!

Surprisingly, I agree with Stacey that 200 dpi is inadequateg: my
experience is that 200 dpi prints look good at 18" but not at 10". They're
not grain-sniffable. And that's from dSLR images (which are sharper than
most scans).

All I have for comparison is my own B&W prints done with my enlarger. I
examine the print 3 inches away and still see fine detail.

Ah, a fellow grain sniffer! 6x7 to 16x20 is less than an 8x enlargement, so
16x20s should look pretty nice from 6x7 assuming a sharp slide/negative to
start with.

I thought about buying the Ilfochrome (Cibachrome) paper and chemicals to
do it myself but I figured I would burn expensive paper and chemicals
while going through the learning process. And I've read how wonderful the
digital LightJet route to color printing supposedly is.

If your lab is printing 6x7 at 16x20 at 200 dpi, that's only about a 1500
dpi scan. A sharp slide, scanned at 4000 dpi and downsampled to 2400 dpi can
look very nice on screen or at 300 dpi. I suspect that what's going on is
that your lab is used to looking at 35mm printed at 16x20, and just doesn't
get it how good medium format should look.

The bad news is that it looks to me that if you want to get most of what's
on your film into a scan, you need to buy a Nikon 8000 or 9000 and scan them
yourself. My experience is that the time and care and effort required to get
a good scan is such that there's no way it can ever be a commercially viable
operation.

David J. Littleboy
Tokyo, Japan

Recently, pgg posted:

I decided to get a 6x7 transparency professionally scanned and
printed by my local pro lab.

I just got my 16x20 print back. It looks nice, but when examining the
print from 6-10 inches, I wasn't exactly blown away by the detail
that I believe exists in the Fuji Velvia transparency. The print is
sharp and looks great from a few feet away. The scan was $45 and the
print was $35 for a total of $80.

I asked for more information. What I assumed was a drum scan wasn't.
They use a $39,000 Scitex flatbed scanner. The lab owner says it
outperformed their drum scanner so they got rid of it.

And the LightJet print was done at 200dpi (or it was scanned at
200dpi). I believe the native resolution of all LightJets is 305dpi.

Does anybody have an idea how much better 300dpi looks for a
continuous-tone LightJet print?

All things being equal, a 300 ppi image could look a lot better than a 200
ppi image. A lot depends on the image. From what you've said, your image
may be capable of better results if you use a higher resolution.

As for the Scitex vs. drum scan, I don't see that as the first place that
improvements can be made. The Lightjet is capable of some really good
output, but unless you're really lucky or not very picky, it won't be from
a point-and-shoot approach. I usually get a set of smaller test prints
made, sometimes using a critical portion of the image enlarged to the
final size. Then I tweak the image to adjust for contrast range and color
balance, and spring for the enlargement only when I get results that I
think are good.

The way I look at it, spending $20 on test prints is a lot cheaper than
scrapping final enlargements.

Regards,

Neil

"David J. Littleboy" wrote in message
...

The bad news is that it looks to me that if you want to get most of what's
on your film into a scan, you need to buy a Nikon 8000 or 9000 and scan
them
yourself. My experience is that the time and care and effort required to
get
a good scan is such that there's no way it can ever be a commercially
viable
operation.

David J. Littleboy
Tokyo, Japan


A great misfortune is the interaction of quality and money you have implied
to this sad tale.
I have a Epson flatbed, 'film' scanner which is God awful on 35mm film but
more than passable on 120 roll film and very, very nice on 4"x5" film.

A 4x5 transparency scanned on this device and printed on a HP designjet at
24" wide looks better than what I once tried to obtain via a commercial drum
scan and Lightjet print.

Saddly, many commercial labs have not kept pace with the developments in
scanners and inkjet printers. The Epson cost me under $300 US and the
printer under $2k US. maybe too much for home users but HP are about to
release a new printer to take on the Epson 4000 which is tipped to be at
home use price. Maybe this gets affordable enough to justify, given that the
prints cost only a few bucks and the quality as good as or better than a
lightjet?

Douglas

In article ,
Douglas wrote:
"David J. Littleboy" wrote in message
Saddly, many commercial labs have not kept pace with the developments in
scanners and inkjet printers. The Epson cost me under $300 US and the
printer under $2k US. maybe too much for home users but HP are about to
release a new printer to take on the Epson 4000 which is tipped to be at
home use price. Maybe this gets affordable enough to justify, given that the
prints cost only a few bucks and the quality as good as or better than a
lightjet?

You may want to separate scanning from printing. First get a good scan and
then find a suitable place (or way) to print the scan.

A LS-9000 costs a lot more than $300, and you do want at least something like
a LS-8000 to extract enough details from a MF frame.

The best deal would be to find a place with a LS-9000 and get a raw 16-bit/ch
scan. That costs the least amount of time for the scanner operator and
allows you to create a good digital image afterwards.

A 20x30 inch digital print on RA-4 paper costs me 8 euro (but the resolution
is 200 ppi). I doubt that any kind of inktjet print can be this cheap.


--
That was it. Done. The faulty Monk was turned out into the desert where it
could believe what it liked, including the idea that it had been hard done
by. It was allowed to keep its horse, since horses were so cheap to make.
-- Douglas Adams in Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

Hi,
The CREO scanner is an excellent piece of equipment IF the scan is done
professionally. Most people think that they can just glue a slide on a
scanner, press -auto- and the scan is perfect - no way!
But assuming that the scan was fine, someone who prints 16x20 at 200dpi
should go back to school. LightJets are quite good but the minimum
resolution you should get that scan printed is 300, better 360dpi on a
really good printer, not necessarily a LightJet. I am usually not a fan
of inkjet printers but I would go to a professional provider for prints
and get it redone.
Another topic of course is the question: Is your 6x7 transparency in
focus, I mean, really in focus, 100% sharp? One lesson which most medium
format non-professionals have to learn is the fact that most of their
images are not really sharp. If you scan the slide at max optical
resolution then you need to see the smallest details at the same level
of sharpness as you can see the grain of the film. Check it - you might
be surprised!
Kind regards
George Nyman



pgg wrote:
I decided to get a 6x7 transparency professionally scanned and printed by
my local pro lab.

I just got my 16x20 print back. It looks nice, but when examining the
print from 6-10 inches, I wasn't exactly blown away by the detail that I
believe exists in the Fuji Velvia transparency. The print is sharp and
looks great from a few feet away. The scan was $45 and the print was $35
for a total of $80.

I asked for more information. What I assumed was a drum scan wasn't.
They use a $39,000 Scitex flatbed scanner. The lab owner says it
outperformed their drum scanner so they got rid of it.

And the LightJet print was done at 200dpi (or it was scanned at 200dpi).
I believe the native resolution of all LightJets is 305dpi.

Does anybody have an idea how much better 300dpi looks for a
continuous-tone LightJet print?

Thanks

In rec.photo.digital David J. Littleboy wrote:

The bad news is that it looks to me that if you want to get most of
what's on your film into a scan, you need to buy a Nikon 8000 or
9000 and scan them yourself.

You don't need to buy one because you can rent one instead. Some
places do cheap weekend rental, and you can get quite a few scans done
in a weekend.

Andrew.

"PGG" wrote in message
newsan.2005.04.20.01.25.07.231000@NO_SP_A_Myahoo .com...

Get a pro cibachrome done and compare.. 200DPI doesn't sound like enough
to
me. I'd never send a print at that rez in for printing.

I'll do something different next time. I'm not gonna spend another $80 on
the same image!

All I have for comparison is my own B&W prints done with my enlarger. I
examine the print 3 inches away and still see fine detail.

I thought about buying the Ilfochrome (Cibachrome) paper and chemicals to
do it myself but I figured I would burn expensive paper and chemicals
while going through the learning process. And I've read how wonderful the
digital LightJet route to color printing supposedly is.

I don't shoot transparency, so I haven't looked at the costs of Cibachrome
materials, but I do routinely make 16x20 RA-4 prints from 6x7 negs. The cost
of a sheet of 16x20 paper is about $1.00USD, the chemistry is about $0.12
for processing (roller transport processor, chemicals purchased in 25 gallon
quantity). For one 16x20, I usually use 1.5 or 1.75 sheets of paper (2 or 3
quarter sheet test prints).

As for the quality: in your case, the quality was determined by the original
transparency, the scanner, the image processing software, and the printer.
In my case, the neg and the enlarger lens determines the quality. If you've
already got the enlarger and the darkroom, get the materials and try it out.
Color printing is _not_ difficult and it is _not_ expensive.

Ken Hart