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#11
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really no purpose anymore for traditional films (negative or diapositve) (by 2006) ?
babelfish wrote:
Well gee wiz. It's about time someone said the obvious. As a custom lab owner for thirty years I'm still truly amazed at the number of people who convince themselves that all photo lab work is exactly the same except for the price. Then there are those more sophisticated folks who like to believe that the same equipment produces the same work no matter who's at the controls, just like the same cameras produce the same shots in every photographer's hands. Right? Get real. People make the difference in all professions and you have to pay for expertise. So just go on running to WalMart and Costco for 13 cent prints. When the last real custom lab dies, you'll all just complain that no one does good work. You slam Costco, but for digital printing, they are hard to beat. The price is right for sure. They only print to 8x10, which is a real limitation sometimes. They do do a very good job with the images, especially if you download their profiles and apply the profiles to your images for upload. The only catch in this workflow that I really have noticed is that they have a file size limit and do not accept TIFF. -- Thomas T. Veldhouse Key Fingerprint: D281 77A5 63EE 82C5 5E68 00E4 7868 0ADC 4EFB 39F0 |
#12
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really no purpose anymore for traditional films (negative or diapositve) (by 2006) ?
In article ,
Thomas T. Veldhouse wrote: They only print to 8x10 Actually the go to 12x18. |
#13
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really no purpose anymore for traditional films (negative or diapositve) (by 2006) ?
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#14
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really no purpose anymore for traditional films (negative or diapositve) (by 2006) ?
Then I should send you a Colorthink screenshot of our profile matched
against Costco's as proof of the difference. You would clearly see that we have about a 20 percent greater gamut volume, mostly in dark saturated colors and deeper blacks. IOW, we print more color than they do. If you're serious about photography, and you must be or you wouldn't be here, then you shouldn't assume that all processing is the same except for the price. The mere pennies that Costco charges makes for quite a deal for the average person who isn't concerned with getting all that is possible from your files, but you DO get what you pay for. We drive our lasers harder to achieve greater Dmax and color gamut, but this reduces the lifespan of the equipment and it's more difficult for our technicians as well. Our workflow places no restrictions on file types and we do any required profile conversions and sizing as a matter of course. Anyone who comes to my lab for reprints with work that was done first at Costco immediately sees the improvement, but most don't remain as steady customers because of our increased cost of doing a great job. Consequently, we get the problem files and most important images while Costco gets the quantity. This is the world we live in where price is the ONLY thing that matters to most people and it's sad when even professionals and corporations are willing to compromise the majority of their images to save a paltry amount of money. In this environment, anyone who attempts to do his best is quickly driven out of business and soon only the shoddy mediocrity of hucksters will remain. "Thomas T. Veldhouse" wrote in message .. . babelfish wrote: Well gee wiz. It's about time someone said the obvious. As a custom lab owner for thirty years I'm still truly amazed at the number of people who convince themselves that all photo lab work is exactly the same except for the price. Then there are those more sophisticated folks who like to believe that the same equipment produces the same work no matter who's at the controls, just like the same cameras produce the same shots in every photographer's hands. Right? Get real. People make the difference in all professions and you have to pay for expertise. So just go on running to WalMart and Costco for 13 cent prints. When the last real custom lab dies, you'll all just complain that no one does good work. You slam Costco, but for digital printing, they are hard to beat. The price is right for sure. They only print to 8x10, which is a real limitation sometimes. They do do a very good job with the images, especially if you download their profiles and apply the profiles to your images for upload. The only catch in this workflow that I really have noticed is that they have a file size limit and do not accept TIFF. -- Thomas T. Veldhouse Key Fingerprint: D281 77A5 63EE 82C5 5E68 00E4 7868 0ADC 4EFB 39F0 |
#15
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really no purpose anymore for traditional films (negative or diapositve) (by 2006) ?
"babelfish" wrote in message news:sLS7h.893$a_2.185@trnddc01... We drive our lasers harder to achieve greater Dmax and color gamut, but this reduces the lifespan of the equipment and it's more difficult for our technicians as well. Our workflow places no restrictions on file types and we do any required profile conversions and sizing as a matter of course. Anyone who comes to my lab for reprints with work that was done first at Costco immediately sees the improvement, but most don't remain as steady customers because of our increased cost of doing a great job. Consequently, we get the problem files and most important images while Costco gets the quantity. The competition from stores that may not give the attention to detail that you obviously do must be very frustrating. However, I have to pick you up on your comment about driving the lasers harder. Either you are trying to mislead or someone's been pulling your chain. Cheers, Dooey. |
#16
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really no purpose anymore for traditional films (negative or diapositve) (by 2006) ?
The competition from stores that may not give the attention to detail that you obviously do must be very frustrating. However, I have to pick you up on your comment about driving the lasers harder. Either you are trying to mislead or someone's been pulling your chain. Not at all. How hard the lasers are driven depends on the Dmax aims that we establish for our paper calibration. Darker exposures are the result of running more power through the lasers resulting in more heat and shorter life. If one is willing to accept a dark gray instead of the maximum black that the paper can produce, then the machine works much less as a lot of leeway is allowed in the system of lasers, power supply and processor. Some leeway is mandatory because maximum aims aren't always possible, but the more we allow the less downtime there will be for out of calibration errors and repairs. Pushing the envelope like this costs real money but the results are quantifiable and quite visible. |
#17
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really no purpose anymore for traditional films (negative or diapositve) (by 2006) ?
"babelfish" wrote in message news:Qv28h.2615$oP6.1634@trnddc03... The competition from stores that may not give the attention to detail that you obviously do must be very frustrating. However, I have to pick you up on your comment about driving the lasers harder. Either you are trying to mislead or someone's been pulling your chain. Not at all. How hard the lasers are driven depends on the Dmax aims that we establish for our paper calibration. Darker exposures are the result of running more power through the lasers resulting in more heat and shorter life. If one is willing to accept a dark gray instead of the maximum black that the paper can produce, then the machine works much less as a lot of leeway is allowed in the system of lasers, power supply and processor. Some leeway is mandatory because maximum aims aren't always possible, but the more we allow the less downtime there will be for out of calibration errors and repairs. Pushing the envelope like this costs real money but the results are quantifiable and quite visible. What is the web page for your service? I'd like to give it a try. |
#18
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really no purpose anymore for traditional films (negative or diapositve) (by 2006) ?
In article Qv28h.2615$oP6.1634@trnddc03,
babelfish wrote: Not at all. How hard the lasers are driven depends on the Dmax aims that we establish for our paper calibration. Darker exposures are the result of running more power through the lasers resulting in more heat and shorter life. Can you tell us what the Dmax is that you deliver and the Dmax of what typical low cost RA-4 printing gives? One thing I find annoying is the lack details companies provide on their web-site (at least where I live). If you are lucky, you can find their prices there. Even details like optimal output resolution are almost never there. -- That was it. Done. The faulty Monk was turned out into the desert where it could believe what it liked, including the idea that it had been hard done by. It was allowed to keep its horse, since horses were so cheap to make. -- Douglas Adams in Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency |
#19
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really no purpose anymore for traditional films (negative or diapositve) (by 2006) ?
In article Qv28h.2615$oP6.1634@trnddc03,
babelfish wrote: If one is willing to accept a dark gray instead of the maximum black That reminds me of the terrible b&w prints one would get from the "drug store" processing in the 60's. Not a hint of black anywhere on the paper. -- http://www.spinics.net/lists/ |
#20
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really no purpose anymore for traditional films (negative or diapositve) (by 2006) ?
The 60's nothing! I still see such b&w prints from many big box store
operations. Worse yet, they're printed on color paper with a severe color cast as well as very low contrast. Most amazingly, people buy it thinking that's what they shot. They get upset with film and their cameras and they blame everything except for the store because that would blow a hole in their belief that all processing is the same except for the price. Once that happens, it gets expensive. For those interested parties, I looked up our data and the profiles show the following black vales as measured in LAB color space: The local Costco = 11 Tech Photo = 2 Absolute black is 0 in LAB space and white is 100. Using the LAB or L* values which are in the profiles themselves removes any discrepancies about which densitometry was used to measure a print because the LAB numbers are measured by a calibrated spectrophotometer in both cases. The actual comparison wireframes which show the increased gamut as well as maximum density are at ftp://ftp.technicalphoto.com/pub/col...e_view_RGB.jpg wrote in message ... In article Qv28h.2615$oP6.1634@trnddc03, babelfish wrote: If one is willing to accept a dark gray instead of the maximum black That reminds me of the terrible b&w prints one would get from the "drug store" processing in the 60's. Not a hint of black anywhere on the paper. -- http://www.spinics.net/lists/ |
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