I am just wondering in the days when wedding pro's did their stuff with film. How as the process like? Obviously they had their favourite lab? Was this mostly a professional level lab and how did they make those colors pop? Was it a special service? I mean when myself average Joe shot film even back in 2000 when we got our first SLR, we shot film, we used a semi pro lab the colors are no where like that quality.
Wedding pro's - how they were printed and processed
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At the Studio I worked for the owner sent out the film to be processed and when it came back he did all the printing himself.
MattKing
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When I was doing most of my wedding work, the lab I used would proof all of my negatives, evaluate the proofs, and re-print anything that required it. For at least part of the time, they also ran test prints ahead of time.
When I worked printing proofs for other wedding and portrait photographers, I operated a Durst mini-printer that had a test print mode. I would print each negative in each roll using that mode and end up with a set of about 1 inch wide test strips - 1 for each negative.
I then evaluated each test, determined what corrections were required, write those corrections on the test strips themselves, and then print the negatives again, with each custom correction applied.
When I worked printing proofs for other wedding and portrait photographers, I operated a Durst mini-printer that had a test print mode. I would print each negative in each roll using that mode and end up with a set of about 1 inch wide test strips - 1 for each negative.
I then evaluated each test, determined what corrections were required, write those corrections on the test strips themselves, and then print the negatives again, with each custom correction applied.
Snap
The black and white images snapped into life because I developed and printed everything myself. In the 1960s I shot only b&w weddings with my trusty Rolleiflex.
The black and white images snapped into life because I developed and printed everything myself. In the 1960s I shot only b&w weddings with my trusty Rolleiflex.
Every wedding photographer that I've know (one of the few jobs I wouldn't do for a million dollars) sent the negs out to a good local color lab for developing and printing. And every one of those labs closed their doors quite a few years ago.
The wedding photographers that I knew were shooting with pro quality film, and mostly used Hasselblads because you could change the lenses and backs out quickly. Their assistants used 35mm, and had good gear too. They usually nailed the exposures, something your average shooter didn't. The labs gave special attention to the wedding guys (that's really where the labs made their money) and their prints looked better than the average walk in customer's stuff did. When everyone in this game went to digital it was bye bye labs.
Nowadays, every soccer mom w/ a DSLR is a "pro" photographer and will shoot weddings and portraits for peanuts. People w/ expensive equipment and an assistant or two can't compete. I've actually seen weddings shot w/ a high quality P&S digital camera, and the lucky couple was handed a DVD w/ the jpgs. No prints. They seemed perfectly happy w/ just that.
The wedding photographers that I knew were shooting with pro quality film, and mostly used Hasselblads because you could change the lenses and backs out quickly. Their assistants used 35mm, and had good gear too. They usually nailed the exposures, something your average shooter didn't. The labs gave special attention to the wedding guys (that's really where the labs made their money) and their prints looked better than the average walk in customer's stuff did. When everyone in this game went to digital it was bye bye labs.
Nowadays, every soccer mom w/ a DSLR is a "pro" photographer and will shoot weddings and portraits for peanuts. People w/ expensive equipment and an assistant or two can't compete. I've actually seen weddings shot w/ a high quality P&S digital camera, and the lucky couple was handed a DVD w/ the jpgs. No prints. They seemed perfectly happy w/ just that.
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In most Pro labs I used the same printer would work with the same group of photographers, the least experienced would get the work from the more casual work that came in over the counter or by post.
My local lab specialised in wedding prints and had about 8 roll head print stations when it was first set up in the early 1980's, by 2000 they had been replaced by a minilab (optical) and that was run by the most experience of the printers, the rest had been made redundant. Volumes were slightly up.
Ian
My local lab specialised in wedding prints and had about 8 roll head print stations when it was first set up in the early 1980's, by 2000 they had been replaced by a minilab (optical) and that was run by the most experience of the printers, the rest had been made redundant. Volumes were slightly up.
Ian
Key to any wedding lab , back in the hey day was a VCNA.. VideoColourNegativeAnalyser..
Also in the custom departments each work station had an enlarger, translator, and roll easel full of paper.
Each technician would start his/her day by taking the control negative and printing out a balance.
The VCNA control neg( Shirley) was normal, under and over.. and the slopes for each were balanced.
Once your translator and the VCNA matched, each operator would take the days work into the VCNA room and basically
colour correct much like we do with PS... when the screen looked correct you would punch out the numbers on a sticker
that showed the deviation to normal.. your translator was set up to normal and the difference (fudge factor) were the numbers you
punched into the translator with your enlarger set up to proper height. by adusting your fstop and the Y and M dials you would zero
in the negative... the translator had a probe which was placed in the center of the image on easel and the negative was not in place.
Once you zero out at a set apeture and Y and M numbers one would make a test strip and move on to the next neg... EACH LAB
PROVIDED CROPPING MASKS AND THE OPERATOR WOULD START AT THE TOP MAGNIFICATION AND WORK DOWN... this allowed one to
be able to quickly test a lot of client negatives..
Each room had its size specialty , I was the 11 x14, 16x20 and 20 x24 printer for Custom Colour Labs here in Toronto, one of my key clients
was Tibor Horvath.
the paper was put on the processor, and then slight corrections by the operator(me) were made and final prints were made.
A good colour Ring A Round was critical and the working tables and lighting were set up for average viewing which meant considering
various lighting conditions.
I did this type of work for 6 years and learned how to dodge, burn very well.. A good wedding portrait has lots of complications from white
lacy detail in the dress, dark suits that need detail, pleasing colour balance for all ethnicity's and colour managing bad casts .. blue in white dress
comes to mind.
The above description is for the custom departments of a Wedding Lab, I refused to work in the Candid Departments where the levels of colour correction
were less stringent.. We always battled to who got the neg's first , as if you were second in line you had to match someones else colour.
I actually quite my job one day over that aspect of the Lab business, and was rehired with a raise and the assurance that I would get the negs
first and the Candid department second.. I was not a popular guy.
Also in the custom departments each work station had an enlarger, translator, and roll easel full of paper.
Each technician would start his/her day by taking the control negative and printing out a balance.
The VCNA control neg( Shirley) was normal, under and over.. and the slopes for each were balanced.
Once your translator and the VCNA matched, each operator would take the days work into the VCNA room and basically
colour correct much like we do with PS... when the screen looked correct you would punch out the numbers on a sticker
that showed the deviation to normal.. your translator was set up to normal and the difference (fudge factor) were the numbers you
punched into the translator with your enlarger set up to proper height. by adusting your fstop and the Y and M dials you would zero
in the negative... the translator had a probe which was placed in the center of the image on easel and the negative was not in place.
Once you zero out at a set apeture and Y and M numbers one would make a test strip and move on to the next neg... EACH LAB
PROVIDED CROPPING MASKS AND THE OPERATOR WOULD START AT THE TOP MAGNIFICATION AND WORK DOWN... this allowed one to
be able to quickly test a lot of client negatives..
Each room had its size specialty , I was the 11 x14, 16x20 and 20 x24 printer for Custom Colour Labs here in Toronto, one of my key clients
was Tibor Horvath.
the paper was put on the processor, and then slight corrections by the operator(me) were made and final prints were made.
A good colour Ring A Round was critical and the working tables and lighting were set up for average viewing which meant considering
various lighting conditions.
I did this type of work for 6 years and learned how to dodge, burn very well.. A good wedding portrait has lots of complications from white
lacy detail in the dress, dark suits that need detail, pleasing colour balance for all ethnicity's and colour managing bad casts .. blue in white dress
comes to mind.
The above description is for the custom departments of a Wedding Lab, I refused to work in the Candid Departments where the levels of colour correction
were less stringent.. We always battled to who got the neg's first , as if you were second in line you had to match someones else colour.
I actually quite my job one day over that aspect of the Lab business, and was rehired with a raise and the assurance that I would get the negs
first and the Candid department second.. I was not a popular guy.
Hey all, that was 1976-82 , the work flow kind of sounds digital Yes / No ??
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I believe most wedding and portrait photographers of old used the film known as VPS, which was Kodak Vericolor Professional Type S. It was the equivalent of the Portra films today. It was designed to reproduce skin tones well. I have heard that some labs that catered to such photographers were set up to process and print VPS and would accept nothing else for quality and consistency.
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Cheers
We got our film SLR in the year 2000, so I was referring to minilabs
These days how does the average Joe get professional looking photographs off film then?
Labs have been closing, I am in a place quite small by international standards. I think our only one Q Lab has shut slides down and outsourced them. When I gave them a roll of Portra NC the colors looked pretty much the same as my Epson V700. The other lab sells equipment as well but always had this cast throughout 2000-2004 yrs we used them that darker green yellow cast or from 1998 with my APS Point and Shoot had the same cast. I did go to other labs to do reprints and noticed the variance. So for us we've never gotten really nice prints ever with film. So ... when digital kicked in the sub $1,000 dSLRs one thing I liked was how digital gave you less cast and after that going back to film I decided to shoot slides intead and got my own film scanner.
It is sad to say that apart from these (2) labs every other lab that I know even in our CBD has shut down. Other than maybe one of those mass places that does work for bookshops and chemists. Many online labs here and at the appliance stores only offer digital kioks machines and print off their Fuji Frontiers.
We got our film SLR in the year 2000, so I was referring to minilabs
These days how does the average Joe get professional looking photographs off film then?
Labs have been closing, I am in a place quite small by international standards. I think our only one Q Lab has shut slides down and outsourced them. When I gave them a roll of Portra NC the colors looked pretty much the same as my Epson V700. The other lab sells equipment as well but always had this cast throughout 2000-2004 yrs we used them that darker green yellow cast or from 1998 with my APS Point and Shoot had the same cast. I did go to other labs to do reprints and noticed the variance. So for us we've never gotten really nice prints ever with film. So ... when digital kicked in the sub $1,000 dSLRs one thing I liked was how digital gave you less cast and after that going back to film I decided to shoot slides intead and got my own film scanner.
It is sad to say that apart from these (2) labs every other lab that I know even in our CBD has shut down. Other than maybe one of those mass places that does work for bookshops and chemists. Many online labs here and at the appliance stores only offer digital kioks machines and print off their Fuji Frontiers.
My parents got married in the late '60s. The photographer worked fast and had B&W proofs to show / sell during the evening meal.
The car parts factory I used to work in would photograph VIPs on arrival and when they left they were presented with that picture mounted in a special booklet.
The car parts factory I used to work in would photograph VIPs on arrival and when they left they were presented with that picture mounted in a special booklet.
I also heard of this at weddings and events too. People would be presented with pictures for sale towards the end of the event. How did they do this ? portable Darkroom in the back room ? wow.
The event photography thing was fairly usual. Photo-op on the way in and collect a picture in a folder, nicely decorated with the name of the event sponsor, on the way out. I suppose it was reduced in desirability with the general aversion to looking at pictures on paper 
I think my parents still have a box of pictures with people they can't remember, at functions run by companies that disappeared decades ago!
In prehistoric times (last century) there were enough labs about that any large town would be able to provide the service via taxi for deliveries, and if that wasn't possible a mobile-lab would be in a van or caravan-style thing (for large budgets only).
I think my parents still have a box of pictures with people they can't remember, at functions run by companies that disappeared decades ago!In prehistoric times (last century) there were enough labs about that any large town would be able to provide the service via taxi for deliveries, and if that wasn't possible a mobile-lab would be in a van or caravan-style thing (for large budgets only).
Here in Minneapolis, I used a lab in the late 80s to early 90s that specialized in wedding work (though I wasn't doing weddings, I was doing oblique aerial photography). They were very inexpensive given the quality of the work - they managed this by having a very specific workflow. Their processing was geared to VPS (as mentioned earlier) though I used higher contrast VHC and Kodak Gold with good results.
Process and roll contacts were very cheap. I think almost all their customers were using medium format, so a roll contact was useful. Crops were done by mounting individual cut negatives into card board frames they provided. Truly custom prints, as well as retouching, were extra. But I think I got high quality optical 8x10s for about $8 then. Proof prints (5x5 from square format) were pretty cheap.
I'm sure some made the argument that their work was not highest quality, and it wasn't truly custom work, but give them a properly exposed negative and you got a good print.
Process and roll contacts were very cheap. I think almost all their customers were using medium format, so a roll contact was useful. Crops were done by mounting individual cut negatives into card board frames they provided. Truly custom prints, as well as retouching, were extra. But I think I got high quality optical 8x10s for about $8 then. Proof prints (5x5 from square format) were pretty cheap.
I'm sure some made the argument that their work was not highest quality, and it wasn't truly custom work, but give them a properly exposed negative and you got a good print.
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