washed out color

[riverman]

i recently had a photo of a rainbow blown up to 30x20 inches, taken on my 10.2 rebel. i was very disappointed to see that the photo was very pale, very lacking in contrast and color - as compared to the 4x6 sample... i saved the image to disk and had it developed. the tech said he could mess with it a little, but im wondering if there's anything i could have done myself, prior to development. any thoughts on saturation/contrast boosting for oversized enlargements...?

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[DSRay]

I've never had the problem you describe. 30x20 is a huge enlargement from a 10 Mb 35mm and I would expect it to soft and noisy but not washed out. Of course I don't normally print larger than 13x19. Was the 4x6 sample printed at the same location as the 30x20? Can you post links to them?

[Cygnus Studios]

I've never had the problem you describe. 30x20 is a huge enlargement from a 10 Mb 35mm and I would expect it to soft and noisy but not washed out. Of course I don't normally print larger than 13x19. Was the 4x6 sample printed at the same location as the 30x20? Can you post links to them?

Also consider the source of the printing. Not all labs are created equally.

[marionet]

Also consider the source of the printing. Not all labs are created equally.

Well said.

I'm pretty much out of my depth here- I have very little experience with digital labs. But if a tech told me he could "mess with it a little", I'd feel a bit queasy. I might be wrong, but I don't see how it's possible that he wouldn't be able to change contrast and saturation so that it comes out looking pretty much like the original file.