On May 4, 2010, at 3:25 PM, Larry Colen wrote:
On 5/4/2010 12:12 PM, paul stenquist wrote:
Financially, store prints are the best deal. But as a photographer,
I find printing to an integral part of the hobby. Mastering the
print is the ultimate challenge, and leaving that to someone else
doesn't work for me.
Paul
I feel very similarly, which is why I did very little serious
photography for about 20 years. Without access to a darkroom, it
wasn't worth the bother and I spent time and money on other hobbies
many of which involved fast cars or women, or at least cars I
attempted to drive fast.
I have finally learned that my resources are finite. My strategy is
to learn each step of the process in turn. I figure that with raw
files, I can always go back and reprocess, or reprint the photos
that are worth doing so, but until I'm competent with a camera, I
won't have any, or at least many, photos that are worth investing
the effort.
I hope that in the next year or two that my camera and lighting
skills will be to the point that I'll get more improvement from
investing time and money into learning post processing than I will
practicing taking the pictures. Somewhere around that time, I'll be
able to justify much higher printing costs, at least for the best of
my photos.
In the mean time, it's fun to get 8x12s of my better shots, and
worth dropping $50-100 a month on prints.
I rarely spend that much per month, although printing was expensive
when I was sorting out my workflow. But now I can usually make a print
that I consider perfect on the first attempt. Once in a while, I'll go
for a second, and then the tweak is usually so minor that it's hard to
see a difference. My cost in ink and paper to print with my Epson
R2400 on 13 x 19 Ilford Gold Fibre or Epson Exhibition Fiber is about
$4 per sheet. That's one 12 x 18 or two 8 x 12 prints. I have boxes
packed with prints and dozens in frames, so I pick the shots that I
want to print very carefully.
Startup is expensive. But once you've sorted it all out, printing can
be quite economical. And very rewarding.
Paul
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