Ken Waller wrote:
I was getting ready to start printing 4" X 6" prints off of one of my Epson printers for 2016 calendars I am in the process of producing, but I had to buy some ink & paper. I've had really good results from Bay Photo & have been pleasantly surprised at their very reasonable prices on large prints so I checked out their cost for 4" X 6" prints & found that I couldn't print myself for the cost of their prints, including postage. With postage, Bay charged me $.30/print. Using Epson 4" X 6" photo paper would have cost me $.33/print, not even including the cost of ink! I ordered them last Thursday & they arrived this afternoon.
Bay Photo started out in a small building next door to Monterey Bay Photo Mart, which seems to have finally closed. MBPM was a tiny store crammed to the gunwales with all the miscellany needed in a darkroom. The last time I was there, about 7 years ago, their inventory did not seem to have substantially changed since my first trip there about 40 years ago.
Bay Photo's new location is the old Seagate buildings on Disc Drive in Scotts Valley. I helped a friend install the network wiring there when they were remodeling it after purchasing. It's a really nice location, about 8 miles from the beach. If you're looking for a low pay job in the photo business, you would be hard pressed to find a prettier place to work.
While I like the control I have over my in house printing, I've given nothing up by having Bay do the work for me. I sent them the highest res jpegs I could, after I had perfected the images thru Photoshop. I requested no changes from Bay and the results are every bit as good as I have gotten in house in the past with out my time to sit by the printer and feed paper to the machine.
I have not yet had Bay do any prints for me. The last few rolls of film I shot, I'd have them process and scan. If/when I need to do some "serious" prints, they'll probably be the first place I go to. In the mean time, I've been quite happy with the results from my local Costco. 4x6 prints are $0.17 12x18 are $4. They publish the ICC color profiles of their printers. They do at least as good of a job as I could, with much better printers than I'll ever be able to afford. I upload the files to the website, and generally an hour or two later they're ready for me to pick up. Several of the workers there recognize me when I walk up and grab my prints out of the stack before I even show them my card.
Just thought others might be interested in my findings.
A couple months ago I wanted to send Mom some prints of my meteor photos from the Pleidies. Since Mom is deathly allergic to learning anything about computers, if I want to show her any of my photos, I have to send her prints. Unfortunately, after the people who run the costcophotocenter website were hacked, the site was down for a bit while they addressed security concerns. It turned out that while Costco is cheaper if I pick up prints rather than getting them mailed, if you're going to mail prints to someone, then Walgreen's is cheaper.
I know nothing about the quality, but I assume that it is good enough for sending snapshots to friends and relatives.
Kenneth Waller http://www.pentaxphotogallery.com/kennethwaller
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