Re: Quality printing

[Eric Welch <ewelch@gp.magick.net>]

At 10:39 AM 6/3/96 -0500, you wrote:

>on your film (unless you print your own or shoot slides).  Does anyone have 
>any suggestions or experience with someplace which does a good job with 4x6 
>prints?  I'm not particularly looking for someone to do single reprint 
>enlargements; I'm interested in someplace to send my roll for development 
>and printing of good quality the first time through.  Any thoughts would be 
>appreciated.

Well,

My thoughts are that print film is a poor choice. It's very expensive to do
well, unless you find a good lab. I learned photography on Kodachrome when
it was a lot cheaper to pocess than neg film. And I learned a lot because of
the film not being real forgiving of errors. Chrome is still my film of
choice at work, except when shooting in bad light and indoors in mixed
light, without my flash/umbrella setup. Then I use neg. And there's nothing
like looking at pictures on a screen 10 feet across!

That being said, I know many people prefer neg film. Finer grain for similar
speeds, and much easier to make prints to share with friends and family. In
Grants Pass the local camera store has it's own mini lab, and well-trained
workers. They process 4x6 prints for me (send them out as post cards) and
they have one of those machines that lets you make your own enlargements in
5 minutes. It is great, if you know what you're doing. Years with Photoshop
helps me get great results from this processor. It goes from 5x7 to 11x14s,
and you control the color balance, exposure, crop and contrast on a video
screen. That's the way to do prints, if you don't have your own darkroom.
Very fine results are possible, if they negatives are properly developed. 

The main thing is find a good place. You will pay a bit more, but in the end
it's worth it. Forget Wal-mart and other cheapo places. Like with cameras,
you get what you pay for. 

==========================
Eric Welch
Grants Pass Daily Courier