Printing large from 4x5 trannies - opinions on UK printers pls

Hi there,

I've been sending my 4x5 chromes to a few labs in order to compare the results and to build a confident feel as to where to order my large prints from. The results so far were unimpressive. My experience with the following "pro" labs so far:

- Cibachrome:

Owenboyd.com: the guy managed to print inside out with colors totally off into green, lost shadow details and chopped off about 15% of the frame;

BPDPhotech.com: much better but with terrible contrast and lost shadows

- Fuji Chrystal Archive:

peak-imaging.com: tranny got scanned on Imacon and printed on C-Type. Great shadow details. The rest is bad: bad colour balance, bad cropping; this people even managed to print from JPG rather than from TIFF! What was a point of shooting 4x5 in a first place.

- Ink Jets:

blueskyimages.co.uk: imacon scan, print on wide ultrachrome epson. The best experience so far, particular on "art" matt paper. Also very personalized and keen service. No particular problems here apart of the fact the largest print must be 24" on once side and they ...errr.... ink jet prints.

Also visited Metro Kustom Lab in London. But was unimpressed with they over-the-counter approach to client and in my view unreasonable prices.

Anyone knows panacea lab that can do a justice for my precious trannies here on UK soil?

just an FYI, for the fuji CA, if its a smaller print and printed on a froniter, the file name ALLWAYS ends in jpg....I worked in a lab running one for two years and can assure you the machine doesn't convert your tiff...assuming you loaded a tiff to anyhting but a fuji raw file before printing. It just defaults to .jpg on the backprinting.

I good lab, not in the UK (sorry!) is West Coast Imagining. They do all my work, as well as the work of many of the finest landscape photographers in the business (not that I am in their league), including those from the UK (like David Henderson).

I am surprised by your experieince with the first two. I have seen stunning prints by both companies on cibachrome. bpd also do top quality Lightjet prints - I saw Joe Cornish's Light Force exhibition last year - all printed by bpd on both ciba and lightjet some to 30 by 40 in if I recall.

I haven't used Owen Boyd, and not been to bpd photech for ages. But would suggest you talk to David at bpd and explain the situation. He is supposed to be very understanding.

I saw some varied and overall unimpressive Lambda prints last night in London at Drummond St Calumet.

Andrew Jackson at www.actpix.com does very good inkjet prints on Photo Rag fine art paper. I have just had one done at A0 (1400x700 mm) from my Flextight scan of a 6x12 Velvia tranny on their 44in Epson printer.
There is a place in Hove or Brighton http://www.spectrumphoto.co.uk/ that is supposed to be good. Not seen any results though.

Also, you need to work with the printer, not just send them the transparency and say "print it". The way I work is to have a small 8x10 printed as a test print, and from there I tell the printer how to tweak the print. If necessary, I'll do a second test print. A good printer will keep the final result on hand, so you can print from it without having to go through that process again.

I've heard very good things about spectrum http://www.spectrumphoto.co.uk/ apparently they do all of Simon Norfolks work, he shoots 5x4 colour, not sure if it's tranny or neg though

good luck

Seamus
www.seamusryan.com

I have used bpdphoteck.com a number of times, the enlargements were always VERY good (6X17, Fuji transparency films, 16X20 paper, currently
GBP 21) and I find their pricing very competitive. A similar enlargement in Germany would have cost 90-100 euros. I hope that such establishments
survive in the future. Here in Athens, where I live, I have been trying to find somebody to enlarge 13X18 B/W negatives for the last six months without success

Hi There

Even though not in UK ,I print large format ilfochrome from digital files. You may want to go to Canada House on Trafalgar Square and see our work. Secret Hollows by Philip Jessup on until Sept 72006

Work flow - 6x7 transparancie> Tango Scans> Lambda Ilfochromes(Ciba) at 400ppi.

If you like the work all that is required is Tango Scans at your end and we will do the printing here for you. Payment in Canadian dollars.

The bad news is that, living near London, I've had the vast majority of my "serious" colour prints from mF tranparencies made in the USA for the last five years. Whenever the selling price can reflect the costs including Fedex charges, and the inevitable longer timescales, my stuff goes to California.

Like you I've explored a number of alternative routes to reflect the fact that sometimes I just can't cope with the time or cost of having Tango scans and LightJet prints together with the transport of transparency, proofs and then final prints from the US.

For a "custom print" solution, you might consider Bayeux at 78 Newman Street W1 ( runs north from Oxford Street between Oxford Circus and Tottenham Court Road). They have a LightJet and a drum scanner ( though not I believe a Tango) and whilst in my view they are not quite up to the standard I get from the likes of WCI they are decent. Not cheap though and a drum scan plus (say) a 20" x 24" print will cost about £100 with VAT.

For cheaper, faster solutions I've tried BPD's Ilfochromes, Peak Imaging and Bayeux' Frontier Lab, BX2, sending each in turn the same few medium format transparencies and the same brief. In general I thought that the BPD prints came out worst with one being very poor indeed. I guess I always tended to believe that low cost Ilfochromes were unlikely to be great. The Peak prints (I paid for their "custom" product) was better but still not good enough for me to want to hang or sell them. The BX2 Frontier prints were the best of a mediocre bunch and were reasonably priced. All of these people fell down on at least one of the images I sent them. The best quality overall is from a Frontier that will print only to 15" x 10" which is smaller than I sometimes like or need and is unlikely to handle the dynamic range of a contrasty tranny well since the scanner isn't the best.

I gave the same material to a friend who made scans and inkjet prints that were in my view better than any of the lab prints I got. But I don't want inkjets.

I'm seriously considering at this point buying a film scanner and calibration kit to make my own files that I can have printed wherever according to my timescales and budget. I just don't think that low cost commercial solutions are going to give me what I want/need.

I can recommend a very good, but not so well known, lab in Birmingham called Palm Lab. Very professional and certainly the best lab in Birmingham.

Maybe give them a call and have a chat.

Palm Laboratory (Midlands) Ltd
69 Rea Street
Birmingham
B5 6BB
UK

0121 6225504
palmlabs@btconnect.com

Matt

Glad you've brought this subject up as I'll be back in the UK soon and will want to know where quality labs are for this service. I keep getting the Peak Imaging brochures delivered - they make themselves out to be the best there is, so nice to get an opinion of someone experienced.... Would welcome your findings.