I feel your pain. Been there. Got the high blood pressure to prove it. I
guess I am lucky. But then, someone, somewhere in the big cities does good
work, or all the pros who use film would also be screaming. Now, I don't get
persnickety about my proof prints, they're just a starting point. Being a
hack, I go through a lot of film to get just a few acceptable shots. I don't
mind paying a premium price to get 2 to 4 out of 20-30 reprinted the way I
want - cropped exposure adjusted, dodged/burned in areas, etc. After all,
it's only 2 to 4 prints out of 20-30 negs.
Regards,
Bob...
------------------------------------------------
"A picture is worth a thousand words,
but it uses up three thousand times the memory."
From: "Mishka" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
lucky you. i tried labs in boston (lots) and nyc (some). both, 1-hr type
and "pro" labs. haven't seen one that would give me back a remotely
reasonable set of prints.
of course, if i were to order "custom" prints -- that's a different story.
and a totally different price point.
the way i see it, the lack of reasonably priced processing/printing
basically forces digital down my throat. when i pay $20 to get a set of
lousy 4x6s that would make me want to yell, an inkjet starts looking
*very* attractive. oversharpened or not.
best,
mishka
On 4/16/05, Bob Blakely <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Y'a know, I'm sure there's a plethora of, well, let's just say "ordinary"
labs out there that are running 35mm through the machines and just
robot-like punching the buttons to select the machine's suggestion for
correction, if any, to be applied to prints. No doubt some labs are
stretching a little on their chemicals too. For some, it may be about
money,
for others it may be about apathy. There are also labs out there where
they
make every effort to insure that first of all, your negatives (positives)
will be the best that can be produced, given what you tell them, and that
the results will be uniformly excellent. I gave up on the small (1 hour
type) labs long ago when my negs were just not up to snuff, and
especially
when I had some come back that looked like film that hadn't been in the
hypo
long enough. I gave up on the department mega Wal-Mart stores when I
couldn't get decent printing. Right now, I gave up on the photography
superstores like Samy's when I couldn't talk with the techs any more. Now
I
get everything done at Pro Photo Connection in Irvine, CA. They have an
impressive big money client list with many of their sometimes famous
photos
on their walls and they want to keep it that way. Now, I'm a hack and
they
treat me the same as the big money clients! It's great to turn in a roll
of
35, 120, 220 - whatever, and ask for whatever I want (within reason -
push
1, push 2, pull 1, etc.) and have things turn out like I expected with
perfect negatives and decent initial prints for proofs. It's also great
to
be able to mark off areas of a print for differing amounts of exposure
and
actually get what I want. They aren't cheap, but they are good and they
are
dependable.
Regards,
Bob...
------------------------------------------------
"A picture is worth a thousand words,
but it uses up three thousand times the memory."
From: "Mishka" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> So you cannot parse a short english sentence.
> That's all.
>
> Mishka
>
>> > even more (by a huge margin) stuff that's produced from film
>> > in the labs stinks.
>> > so?
>>
>> So you are a bad printer.
>> Thats all.
