Prints from 16mm Negative

[Will Montgomery]

I have some really great shots on a Vision2 50D roll that I would love to grab stills from for large photo prints. I'd rather not cut up the film if possible, but I would think that to do a traditional enlargement I would have to cut out the frames I want enlarged.

 

I'd like to do a photo blowup to 11x15; I know it would be VERY grainy, but that might just ad the right character to this particular shot.

 

Should I try to do a high-res drum scan of the negative frame? I'd have to cut it up for that...

 

Can traditional chemical color prints on paper be made from movie negatives? Or would it make more sense to get a really good high-res scan and do a Lambda print or Light-jet print from that?

[Mike Rizos]

You don't have to cut up the 16mm negative to make paper prints of single frames. Almost all the negative carriers I'm familiar with, allow for an unlimited length of film on either side. Off course finding a lab that will want to handle a long run of film might be difficult. Since you are not set up with a darkroom, one option might be the local college, where you can probably find a helpful student who may do this for you. I've never photo printed 16mm negative myself, but I have enlarged small sections of the 35mm frame and found that some negatives take enlargment better than others. I would go no more than 8x10.

[Laurent Andrieux]

Hi,

 

I've been printing to paper from 35 mm motion picture film.

 

It was from the bits that are cut off from the neg at the lab, after printing the dailies, you know, with the chart, with either the DoP or Grip or Gaffer holding it close to the talent (that the colorist uses for timing) for the DoP to check processing and use the positive print for later reference (I don't know the name in english), when I was Acing.

 

I gave the neg to a professional photo lab I used to work with.

 

Technically the print itself was great, I consider there is no technical problem about that, considering the printing transfer to photo paper.

 

For sure, the print was very grainy but I didn't mind. I entended it as a souvenir of the shoot, I liked it well.

 

But, for what's about16 mm print from a roll, that's another story to me...

 

As wel, mind that if you shoot 1.66 or 1.85, the lab may be confused by the format, since still photo formats are not the same...

[Boris Belay]

One option to avoid cutting up the film may be to scan the neg. Most flat-bed scanners that handle negs have a film feeder of some sort, often in 16mm. format. The scanner would have to be decent in terms of resolution, but the upscale consumer scanners that somebody around you may already own should be good enough.

It may seem strange to go through a digitizing process for a final paper print, but the advantages are that 1) you can work on the neg yourself (formats, resolution, corrections,...) and 2) that any lab, even 'street corner' ones, should be able to handle your digital file for a paper print.

Now, the main question is whether the quality will be optimal... but at least it's cheap to try.

-B

Edited December 16, 2005 by bobolex