Reader's Comments - Index of - Free

Evaluating Photos
For price and selection, Adorama is probably the best place in the U.S. to buy light boxes and loupes.
With negatives
Prepare for a confidence-destroying experience. Proof prints are generally terrible but the negative
contains a lot of information that can be extracted with careful printing or with PhotoShop.
My favorite way of evaluating proofs is to have an enlarged contact sheet made. This can only be done
by pro labs with 8x10 enlargers. What they do is flatten all the negs between glass just as they would for
a regular contact sheet, but then stick the whole mess in the enlarger and project onto a 16x20" sheet of
paper. This costs about $30 but lets you look at a whole roll at once. If your time is valuable it can be
worth it, especially because you'll never spend a minute trying to match a proof to its negative.
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Reader's Comments
I've used the Schneider 4x loupe, the NPC 5.5x Prolupe, and the Rodenstock 4x loupe in direct
comparisons on approximatley 1000 slides.
The Schneider 4x gave excellent color, excellent contrast, and uniform sharpness across the entire frame.
It was possible to see the whole frame from one viewing spot, even with eyeglasses on. The only
significant criticism of the Schneider is that it is made from light gage plastic, and fairly delicate.
The NPC also gave excellent color rendition and excellent contrast. It too was uniformly sharp over the
entire frame. Because of the larger power of magnification, slightly more detail is discernable with the
NPC than with the Schneider. The NPC is harder to view with eye glasses on. The NPC is very robust -
it is made from aluminum and plastic and it weighs about twice as much as the Schneider.
http://www.photo.net/photo/evaluation (3 of 17)7/3/2005 2:19:24 AM