Enlarging from negatives versus print

Hi.

This is probably a lame question, but when enlarging, what gives
better quality, scanning from photo negatives, or print?

I have a person that says he/she wants something enlarged, but only
wants to do it with the negatives, because the print wouldn't yield
acceptable quality.

This is CD cover/booklet size to probably A4 or A3.

If negatives are so much better to use, can anyone give me a layman's
explanation as to why, i.e. are there points on a negative or is it
all intertwined or layered or what.

Thanks.

In article , xyz123
@broadpark.no says...
Hi.

This is probably a lame question, but when enlarging, what gives
better quality, scanning from photo negatives, or print?

I have a person that says he/she wants something enlarged, but only
wants to do it with the negatives, because the print wouldn't yield
acceptable quality.

This is CD cover/booklet size to probably A4 or A3.

If negatives are so much better to use, can anyone give me a layman's
explanation as to why, i.e. are there points on a negative or is it
all intertwined or layered or what.

Thanks.

Prints have lower resolution than negatives. The paper limits the
amount of detail. In order to make use of the better detail in
the negatives you need a scanner with enough resolution as well.
A typical flatbed with 1200 dpi resolution and a film adaptor
will permit about a 4x enlargement. This will be a 4x6 inch print
from 35mm. Not much different than scanning from a snapshot.
Dedicated film scanners have resolutions up to 5400 dpi. This
allows a magnification of 18x (at 300 dpi print).
Colors are also better when starting from the original film.
--
Robert D Feinman

Landscapes, Cityscapes, Panoramas and Photoshop Tips
http://robertdfeinman.com

(Vertical Pan) writes:
Hi.

This is probably a lame question, but when enlarging, what gives
better quality, scanning from photo negatives, or print?

I have a person that says he/she wants something enlarged, but only
wants to do it with the negatives, because the print wouldn't yield
acceptable quality.

This is CD cover/booklet size to probably A4 or A3.

If negatives are so much better to use, can anyone give me a layman's
explanation as to why, i.e. are there points on a negative or is it
all intertwined or layered or what.

When you print a negative, there are losses in fine detail that are on
the negative but don't make it to the print.

Also, only a portion of the brightness range captured by the negative
can be printed in a single print, which is determined by the printing
exposure. If you really wanted to capture the full brightness range,
you'd have to make several prints at different exposures, scan each one,
align the scans, and do some processing to fit the sections of
brightness range back together.

In comparison, a slide scanner scans the original at very high
resolution and good scanners can capture the whole brightness range
present in the negative (which is by design lower in contrast than the
print).

Dave

"Vertical Pan" wrote in message
om...
Hi.

This is probably a lame question, but when enlarging, what gives
better quality, scanning from photo negatives, or print?

I have a person that says he/she wants something enlarged, but only
wants to do it with the negatives, because the print wouldn't yield
acceptable quality.

This is CD cover/booklet size to probably A4 or A3.

If negatives are so much better to use, can anyone give me a layman's
explanation as to why, i.e. are there points on a negative or is it
all intertwined or layered or what.

Thanks.

Prints have far poorer resolution than negatives. Scanning a print at more
than 150 to 200 ppi won't bring out more detail. It is OK for making
same-size copies, but won't give quality enlargments. On the other hand,
even scanning at 1200 dpi won't catch all of the detail in a negative.

This is probably a lame question, but when enlarging, what gives
better quality, scanning from photo negatives, or print?

I have a person that says he/she wants something enlarged, but only
wants to do it with the negatives, because the print wouldn't yield
acceptable quality.

This is CD cover/booklet size to probably A4 or A3.

If negatives are so much better to use, can anyone give me a layman's
explanation as to why, i.e. are there points on a negative or is it
all intertwined or layered or what.

The layman's explanation (I don't know any other kind) is that negatives are
generally better because they contain more detail than the print. The print
has already lost some detail just by being printed. Then when you scan it
and print it again you're losing still more detail. However, negatives
aren't necessarily always better to use, it depends to some extent on the
size of the negative and the desired size of the final print. If, for
example you have a good 8x10 print from a 35 mm negative and a flat bed
scanner that scans at say 1200 actual ppi, and you want to make say an 11x14
print, you'd probably be better off scanning the print rather than trying to
enlarge such a small negative so much with a scanner that doesn't produce
many ppi.

"Dave Martindale" wrote in message
...
(Vertical Pan) writes:
Hi.

This is probably a lame question, but when enlarging, what gives
better quality, scanning from photo negatives, or print?

I have a person that says he/she wants something enlarged, but only
wants to do it with the negatives, because the print wouldn't yield
acceptable quality.

This is CD cover/booklet size to probably A4 or A3.

If negatives are so much better to use, can anyone give me a layman's
explanation as to why, i.e. are there points on a negative or is it
all intertwined or layered or what.

When you print a negative, there are losses in fine detail that are on
the negative but don't make it to the print.

Also, only a portion of the brightness range captured by the negative
can be printed in a single print, which is determined by the printing
exposure. If you really wanted to capture the full brightness range,
you'd have to make several prints at different exposures, scan each one,
align the scans, and do some processing to fit the sections of
brightness range back together.

In comparison, a slide scanner scans the original at very high
resolution and good scanners can capture the whole brightness range
present in the negative (which is by design lower in contrast than the
print).

Dave

Just about any analog process will loose information in going from one
generation of information to another. The original negative or slide
contains less information than the actual scene. A print made from this will
contain even less information -- some is lost due to poor focus and
abberations in the image path, even more will be lost when the image
diffuses into the emultion on the print.

This is not always bad -- sometimes the softness of a print, crisped up
through edge sharpening in Photoshop produces an image which when printed
appears better than the original. It is an illusion -- which unfortunately
encourages relatives to troop out even more pictures of long deceased aunt X
to 'make a few copies for the family, please...'.

With the same sort of massaging, the original negative would produce really
good images, but when all one has is the print, the same size or smaller
results can be pretty good. But remember, every generation of copy from the
original scene looses information -- the best results come from the shortest
path.


--
Greg Latiak

Images http://members.rogers.com/greglatiak/

Quoth "Gregory N. Latiak" :
....
| With the same sort of massaging, the original negative would produce really
| good images, but when all one has is the print, the same size or smaller
| results can be pretty good. But remember, every generation of copy from the
| original scene loses information -- the best results come from the shortest
| path.

I should try it myself, just for curiosity's sake.

Some percentage of my color negatives basically will not scan.
Entirely my fault, apparently, they seem to be overexposed and
color shifts in the highlights, but in some cases I believe the
proofs if I can dig them up were not as bad - like RA4 has a
much narrower range than a scanner, so doesn't see the problem.

Anyway, for thinner negatives the negative is a much better bet
than the print, my point is just that in some cases the print
may be the only way.

Donn

On Wed, 21 Jan 2004 05:09:32 -0800, Vertical Pan wrote:

Hi.

This is probably a lame question, but when enlarging, what gives better
quality, scanning from photo negatives, or print?

I have a person that says he/she wants something enlarged, but only wants
to do it with the negatives, because the print wouldn't yield acceptable
quality.

This is CD cover/booklet size to probably A4 or A3.

If negatives are so much better to use, can anyone give me a layman's
explanation as to why, i.e. are there points on a negative or is it all
intertwined or layered or what.

Thanks.


It all depends on the quality of the original print. I would opt for
going to original material (neg) for best quality. Prints are second
generation. Copy a print and you now have a third generation from the
original. Each generation will lose something although the losses are not
always apparent.

If the end result is a CD cover, I'm not so sure the concerns are the same
since the enlargement is not that great.

On Wed, 28 Jan 2004 06:00:18 -0000, "Donn Cave"
wrote:

Quoth "Gregory N. Latiak" :
...
| With the same sort of massaging, the original negative would produce really
| good images, but when all one has is the print, the same size or smaller
| results can be pretty good. But remember, every generation of copy from the
| original scene loses information -- the best results come from the shortest
| path.

I should try it myself, just for curiosity's sake.

Some percentage of my color negatives basically will not scan.
Entirely my fault, apparently, they seem to be overexposed and
color shifts in the highlights, but in some cases I believe the
proofs if I can dig them up were not as bad - like RA4 has a
much narrower range than a scanner, so doesn't see the problem.

Anyway, for thinner negatives the negative is a much better bet
than the print, my point is just that in some cases the print
may be the only way.


This runs entirely contrary to my five or six years of
film scanning -- mostly from negatives, on a variety
of film scanners.

It is ludicrously easy to expose negatives properly in
the first place, given their huge lattitude. And easy to
scan also, since the density range on the film is
lower than for chromes, by an order of magnitude.

I've used film scanners ranging from a Microtek 35 to
a SprintScan Plus, to Nikon LS-8000 and Epson 1640.
No problems ever getting negatives to "scan right."
(I'll soon be scanning LF negs on a Microtek 2500.)

On the Nikon (my current scanner for MF) I've been
scanning negs as positives, then inverting the colors
in the scanner driver. This is mostly to work around
a bug in the scanner driver that compresses
shadow detail in negatives. See


http://www.marginalsoftware.com/LS8000Notes/LS8000Notes.htm


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

"Raphael Bustin" wrote in message
...
It is ludicrously easy to expose negatives properly in
the first place, given their huge lattitude. And easy to
scan also, since the density range on the film is
lower than for chromes, by an order of magnitude.

Yah, but what does an order of magnitude amount to on a log-scale?