----- Original Message ----- From: "Mark Roberts" Subject: Re: OT: Interesting PMA numbers
> > In fact, if you think about it for a moment, it's the old way of doing > things back in the film era that was absurd: You had to get prints made > before you could decide which of your shots were worth printing! Sheer > madness, but it seemed to all of us (I think) a reasonable state of > affairs at the time -- mostly because there was no alternative at the > time, I suppose. The industry was set up on a couple of premises: One was that if you pushed the button, then you wanted a picture. The other was that if you submitted a film for processing, you wanted prints from what was there. Add to this the North American societal habit of consumption above all else, and there you go. What happened in the marketplace that I disagreed with was the consumer premise that the cheap 4x6 print somehow had to be of the best quality possible. We were offering a cheap develop and print proofing service, and the customers were expecting perfect colour, no dust, etc for their 12 cents. And then, they bitched royally after their negative got damaged on the dozenth pass through the gilm gate. I've heard tell of labs in Europe that had light tables in the customer areas so that photographers could pick and choose which negatives were to be proofed, but I don't think that was ever an option anywhere in Canada or the USA. The average North American picture consumer has the photographic education of a gnat, and usually was standing at the counter with a diaper bag in one hand and a diaper filler in the other. This is not the person to pick and choose prints from looking at a negative. William Robb -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
