Konica QD-21 vs. Fuji Frontier

My local semi-pro lab (Torget Foto in Trondheim) has a Fuji Frontier 370. If you give them a file, they don't perform any adjustments except resizing when necessary. If you prepare it in the proper size and resolution (300dpi), your pixels are sent to the printer "as is".

When I produce a printer file from the same master file that was used to publish the image on my site, the resulting print looks pretty much similar to the Web image, i.e. close to optimal. Don't forget to apply generous amount of sharpening to the printer file.

Michael, I just wanted to say a quick thank-you for trying this thing out and telling us what the results were like!

Good report Michael. Looks like Fuji's machine is still "top dog".

Concerning pixelation; by benchmark film for the Fuji Frontier is of course NPH. These 4x6 prints from my lab will show some pixelation only if you hold them 6" from your face in bright sunlight. Perfectly acceptable to me since the improved sharpness and clarity are well worth the trade-off.

Be aware that the pixelation problems with the Frontier are not due to the printing stage or a limitation of DPI. My 6x7 negs printed up to 8x10 on the Frontier are perfectly seamless, and even with a loupe you can't tell them from hand made analog custom prints. 4x5 proofs from 6my x7 negs look like contact sheets made from 4x5 film off this Frontier.

I've had decent luck making prints directly from digital files off the Frontier if I use the sRGB color space in Photoshop. The problem is that the Frontier still applies some enhancement automatically to these files, even if you don't want it. While colors drive harder, they are in most respects inferior to my ink-jet prints.

Interesting ... I've only tried this once, but when I had the same 35mm negative printed at both 4x6" and 8x12" on a Frontier, it looked to me like the pixellation was at the printing stage - the pixels on the larger picture were not twice the size they were on the smaller picture (as you'd expect if the pixels were due to the scan); they looked like they were about the same size.

Anyway, to me, it's not a big problem. I've had roughly 400 frames printed on Frontiers so far, and there have only been one or two where my unaided eye sees something a bit weird that, under a loupe, turns out to be pixellation. Given the improvements that the Frontier makes to most pictures, I'll put up with that.

I'm looking at a 4x6 Fuji Frontier print from NPH where dark objects on a brighter background are surrounded by a thin white halo. This does not appear on the negative. Some kind of digital artifact at the printing stage? But most of my other prints look fine...

dark objects on a brighter background are surrounded by a thin white halo

This is sharpening.

I always wished Photoshop had an unsharp mask option that allowed to mute its effect for high-contrast borders while sharpening low- and medium-contrast details as specified.

The dreaded "halo effect" on Frontier prints might be due to USM or bloom caused by the CCD scanner, I haven't figured out which yet. I usually notice it along the edges of clouds in a sky with higher contrast films.

Yep, my 6x7 neg print have zero pixels. Most 35mm films I can tell they're Frontier prints if I really want to scrutinize them, but MF is perfect.

I was a devotee of the Frontier until I started seeing more poor examples from it. Despite having some pretty good prints made at 8x10 from Kodachrome 25, all the stuff I'm seeing my friends and associates from the Frontier lately is incredibly pixellated and "digital looking." What gives? To me, there is NO EXCUSE to have your film downgraded to cheap-looking computeresque printouts by a supposedly professional machine. At first glance, these 3x5s look preternaturally sharp, but on second glance (and I do mean glance. .you don't have to scrutinize these to see the problems), you can see the sharpness is artificial and at the cost of very distinct pixel patterns. What gives? To me, this is not "sharpness and clarity;" it's bad repro process. Not only is the tradeoff, as another poster put it, pixellation, but also a loss of detail. All those sharp edges (which are actually tiny little squares set diagonally to one another so the line isn't even continuous tone)are a total waste of real image detail. I've looked at my original slides, for instance, and can make out the blades of grass projected at quite high enlargement. On the Frontier print. . they're a blur of tiny little squares-more an "impresssion" of the blades than an actual representation. If I want sharpness and clarity, I'll rely on the superior lenses I use to get that. I don't appreciate seeing my efforts to maximize my equipment's capabilities being negated by a machine that loses detail in the sharpening and makes my film look like a cheap digital camera shot. Can anyone explain to me why this is happening on some Frontier prints, and not others? Is this operator error? I certainly hope people don't begin to accept that kind of photofinishing en masse without question, as it leads to a loss of quality and also to the perception that film images look like your el-cheapo digicam shots. Gosh, is it too much to ask just to get a good print from a good negative without a machine that decides you'd rather have artificial looking processing than an actual representation of your negative?

An addendum: I certainly didn't want to imply in my post that no one else here has "superior lenses", just to point out that I don't feel that artificial sharpening which doesn't add real detail or "clarity" (defined, in my opinion, as excellent resolution of real image detail) is an improvement to the shots I work hard to get with the few good lenses I can afford. That's why I saved up for them- I don't have to "rescue" shots in post-processing if I shoot with a good lens and good technique. To me, all this picture "improvement" and sharpening is the same thing they use in magazine repro to increase the APPARENT detail of the rather low-resolution medium that is magazine reproduction. That is certainly not acceptable to me in photographic prints- I want my prints to look like photos, not posters. I've never felt my sharp, top quality, optically made prints were somehow inferior because they didn't have that vaguely "videoesque" look that many people mistake for real clarity and detail. Now, if the machine's only function was that it negated any optical aberrations present in a lens-based enlargement system(at the professional print-making level, these are negligible at best anyway), that would be great. Beyond that, it's all downhill for me, because USM on an image that's sharp at the capture stage is, at best, gilding the lily, and in my experience, usually unnatural looking and not very pleasing. Unfortunately, it's become all too clear that the more complicated toys you put in the hands of WalMart type photo workers, the more chance they have to ruin your images and lower the public's expectations. . which is never good but constantly happening. Others may see it differently, but I just wanted to clarify my thoughts on that.