In the small town I am in there is a Wal-Mart, an Eckarts, and a Walgreens. You can get big inkjet prints done at a couple of print shops. Photographically speaking it is a desert, despite the local university having a photography program. Digital is a god send for anything you can not wait 2 weeks for.
But even in the old days high volume work went out by mail to a people lab (specializing in weddings, senior, and sports photography -200 unit minimum order), a camera store that did semi-custom machine prints (quick turn around), or a world class custom hand printer (who didn't want to do that anymore so charged an arm and a leg, and only did it for old customers). If you have customers in a slack market you need to have it done right every time. All of these were of the quality that if they screwed up you never saw it as they did it over before handing them to you. My work except for portraits was all develop and print 8x10. The price difference between them was $2 ($4 if you didn't meet minimum order), $8, $25 per 8x10 in 1982. Note that I was a commercial photographer not a wedding photographer or photojournalist. As I said a quick check on the web shows that North American Photo is still in business, and they probably print a lot of digital work now. I am pretty sure the others are not. Anyway, you always had to pay for good work and probably send it out of town as well unless you had your own darkroom. If you like darkroom work you are as well off with film as with digital. If you do not you are better off with digital. However if you do high volume work (anything over a hundred or so 8x10's delivered per week), it is still better to send it off even if you are shooting digitally, which is why many of those labs are still in business. I definitely am not in the current market so can not speak for it. But I do know that most of the folks here (there are a few exceptions) have no idea what it is like working as a full time commercial photographer. The weekend warrior stuff is not the same at all, and I imagine working for a big studio is different too. -- graywolf http://www.graywolfphoto.com http://webpages.charter.net/graywolf "Idiot Proof" <==> "Expert Proof" ----------------------------------- Steve Sharpe wrote: > At 12:04 PM -0400 8/17/06, graywolf wrote: >> Then you have never used even a merely decent lab. > > You are probably right. > >> But I will agree it was getting harder to find a decent lab outside of >> very large cities in the decade or so prior to the event of digital. The >> mini-labs were putting them out of business. You have to realize that >> mass marketers do not run their mini-labs as profit centers, their main >> purpose is to get people to wander about the store for an hour or so. > > I live in small town USA...a good 250 miles from a large city. I deal > with a lab about a 45 minute drive from here. They are not a mass > marketer; processing and printing (film and digital) is their only > business, apart from selling P&S cameras, accessories, albums etc. > That said, the bulk of their customers are obviously snapshooters who > would not know a decent print if it came up and bit them. I'm sure if > there were a Wal-Mart in the area then the majority of their > customers would flock to it and they would be out of business in > short order. > > They get my black and white business, my medium format and what > little C41 I shoot. Process only, please, no prints. My 35mm slides > (the bulk of what I shoot) go to Fuji/Dwayne's or Kodak. -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net
