Massimo Vitali's drum scans and LightJet print from 11x14" color negs

[federico9001]

This Massimo Vitali's dyptich consists of 2 pictures from 11x14 inches
Kodak Portra color negatives, to be printed 180x225 cm (71x89") each one
(the final dyptich size is about 180 x 500 cm).

When the photolab processed the negatives it didn't fix the second one
correctly: after some months we found out that the negative was
completely damaged,
it lost a lot of contrast, and on the whole surface it was full of
sposts and stripes of several different colors, magenta, red, etc...

We decided to restore it working digitally.

I did n2 scans on my Dainippon Screen drum scanner, each one
was 1.4 Gb; I matched perfectly all the colors of the negatives, because
they were completely different.
Then I corrected every color spot and stripe.

The final file was about 2.7 Gb. We printed it at the world famous
Grieger Lab in Dusseldorf; the technicians at the lab told us that they
never saw before a file of higher quality from a color film:

the LightJet print that came out was absolutely extraordinary.

Massimo Vitali's dyptich - original 'preview' scan (NEGATIVE DAMAGED) | Flickr - Photo Sharing!

Massimo Vitali's dyptich: the zoomed crops follow... | Flickr - Photo Sharing!

With Massimo Vitali at Grieger Lab, Dsseldorf | Flickr - Photo Sharing!

 

[David A. Goldfarb]

Good save, and a testament to how much information is there in the film that even with less than ideal conditions, with a processing mistake, exposure error, or shutter malfunction, you can often still recover a decent image.

 

[federico9001]

Yes, indeed, through the right workflow film is still an extraordinary media.