High Street Processing - Information on the process ?

[Mark101]

I've started to get back into film again after a gap of some years. On receiving my prints back from Boots ( I know - say nothing) I notice some shots, particularly in poorer lighting, seem to be suffering from a grainy looking effect which to me looks similar to oversharpening on a digital image.

My question is this - Are modern D&P labs processing film and producing prints from an image scanned off the neg ? The CD I requested with files of around 1 mg each seem to suffer from the same problems.

[Manofolympus]

Yes is the short answer-AFAIK none of the high street outlets do them "properly" so you are at the mercy of how the machine has been set up. You can go back and complain, telling them exactly what you think the problem is, and hope the technician knows enough about what they're doing to alter it.
On the bright side, the negs will be ok so you can get any good ones reprinted by someone else

[Roy5051]

My local Boots does a sterling job on both digital and film processing. How they do it, I do not know, but as long as the results are OK, it doesn't bother me.

[Mark101]

Some shots are fine, but those with a little shadow detail are grainy and as I said look over sharpened.

[johnnopc]

if your pictures look grainy this could be because they are under exposed. look at the negative for the shots in question and if they look a lot lighter than others that are ok then thats the problem.
most places process your film then digitally scan the negatives and print from the scan. you can tell if they do if you can see a screen with an operator looking at peoples pictures - they are the digital scans.
being digital i suspect that most are sharpened and yes they can over do it.
if you keen on trying film and colour print i would strongly recimend you try a mail order processing such a peak imagining as the results are far better than anywhere on the high street.
ian

[John_K]

I would go along with underexposed as well.

The exposure scanner in the lab machine is set up for an average guestimate so if yours are way off the average then you will get that effect.