Bruin with lunch

[MN Shutterbug]

Another photo from Katmai. Due to the cheap photo paper our local one hour lab uses, the picture got way too contrasty. Unfortunately, I don't have a film scanner, so this is the best I have. This was shot with the Nikon 35mm and Tokina 60-300mm F4 lens and Vivitar doubler.

[Steve Foss]

Too bad on the print quality, XT, because that's a really sweet image and is crying out for more detail in the shadow areas, which most films were good at capturing.

Plenty of labs in the Twin Cities scan slides and negatives inexpensively and give you the digital images on CD. A good thing to look into. Of course, the quality varies with the equipment and expertise of the users.

[MN Shutterbug]

Thanks, Steve. I'm going to have to check and see if I still have the negatives.

What's sad about this one hour photo lab is, they also take graduation photos and use the same cheap photo paper. When my last daughter was a senior in high school, she would bring home photos of her classmates. Without even turning the picture over, I could tell which ones were done by our local camera store. They were all extremely contrasty. Whereas, the ones taken by other area photographers and sent to professional labs, had excellent color and detail. I learned later, the reason they used this cheap paper is because they got it free by buying all their chemicals from the same outfit. I guess it saves them a lot of money and many people don't even see the low quality.

[finnbay]

Neat shot. Good composition!

[Steve Foss]

XT, the bigger and better photo labs probably are cheaper than your local photo shop. Our local one in Ely has excellent quality but can't compete price-wise against the biggies because of the difference in volume of business.

To find a top professional scanning service for negs and slides, I'd call National Camera Exchange in the Twin Cities and ask them who they think is the best.

Sure hope you can find those negs. They are irreplaceable. Unless, of course, you wanna head back to shoot more bears. Since you're on a platform and presumably out of reach, count me in!