Re: [Leica] can't beat the minilab

[Mark Rabiner <mrabiner@concentric.net>]

Alan Ball wrote:
> 
> Well Mark, what can I say...
> 
> Have you read the whole post ? I know the conclusion seems provocative.
> It is meant to be ;-)
> 
> But it is confirmed by my personal experience of SELECTED minilabs using
> good processing/printing hardware, with clean, dust free room, and, most
> important, capable, proactive, literate and friendly clercks. Those have
> provided me with prints, up to medium sizes, that have nothing to envy
> from the high end pro labs I've tried. They provide me with immediate
> access (1 hr) to those prints, which in turn enables me to get them
> almost immediately to the customer or the friend who needs them. They
> offer me a price/quality/convenience ratio that remains miles ahead of
> what I get from from my scanner/PC/inkjet setup.
> 
> This works only for color negs of course. E6, prints from slides and b/w
> are other kettles of soup...
> 
> Friendly regards,
> 
> Alan
snip
Yea, but the minute you walk out the door the Techno geek you entrusted
your film to is replaced on his/her lunch break with a guy/gal who was
working at McDonalds the day before but was fired because of an
overabundance of piercings.(Studs through nose Etc). If he doesnt shred
your film or put twinkies fragments in your bleach/fix you are still
going to end up with one thing: Snapshots.
You put your masterpiece of German Artful Engeneering multi thousand
dollar but otherwise priceless lens and a Camera of the same quality and
cost and shoot a once in a lifetime event and what do you end up with: Snapshots.
It's a guilty pleasure that I just wouldn't talk up. I'm clobbering you
on this but I really do feel strongly about it.
A Minilux, a point and shoot, a Rollei 35, all feed the minilab, quick
and dirty instant gratification. But our M and R Gems deserve better.
They create our body of work. They deserve a contact sheet. They deserve
slides which come back in two hours with no scratches or twinkie
remnants and can be instantly projected as big as your house or
temporarily put in those cardboard pages with the vinyl protectors.
Anything but snapshots which at their best reduce all imagery to the
lowest common denominator.
You've got a point about scanning not being an instant barrel of monkeys
but the answer is not the minilab, there are other options, some just as instant.
Respectfully,
Mark Rabiner