Printing Poll

[Photo-John]

We've done this poll a few times, but it's time to do it again. How does everyone here get prints made?

Printing Quick Poll >>

Feel free to add comments or elaborate here. I'm curious as to how our printing habits have changed over the past few years. For instance, I hardly print anything anymore. Almost everything goes straight to the Web. I care little about prints for myself. I pretty much only have prints made if someone pays me for a print.

How about you? How do you print and how much do you print?

[mjs1973]

I choose Online Pro Lab. Not sure if you consider mpix a pro lab or an online photosharing/print service, but that's who I use. I don't print that many photos tho. A few pics here and there, but that is a very small percentage of what I take.

[mtbbrian]

I choose a little bit of some of them?
For the most part, I take stuff down to my local "pro lab" www.borge.net.
However, I have recently uploaded a few files to them as well.
Furthermore, I have recently begun doing some printing at home too. Just work prints to get a feel for what the photograph will look like on 8.5"x11".
I have even been looking at purchasing a high end digital printer, like the Epson 1800.
Good poll John!
Brian

[opus]

I answered for the majority of my behavior.

I don't get prints made. I intend to, someday, but just haven't gotten around to it yet. ;)

IF I would start printing, I'd print mostly on my home printer. Second, if the shots were important, I'd personally drive them to a local lab. Someday, I expect I'll try an online lab, but so far it's too confusing to figure out who to go with and how much I should be paying. Plus I don't have a compelling reason to spend the money just yet.

[ken1953]

So far, as for my digital stuff..which is 99% of what I shoot, I use my Epson Photo Stylus R300. It has been more than satisfactory. However, I have been considering having some blown up and am considering sending them to a pro lab or internet lab.
Ken

[tink]

I tend to use a Local Lab but when I say local it's about an hour from here as we have no good local labs!! IT's also dependant on what photos I want printed! For business I use the lab, for myself I use the lab if I want to hang it. FOr me I"ll often print off my own printer as well and for sharing to friends or family I'll use my printer or a lab online!

Confused Yet??? I think I am!!

[Liz]

I used to use Walmart for small prints (4x6 - 5x7) and they did a great job. Maybe they didn't take care of their machines, but the quality declined a bit. I started using Winkflash.com. They are very inexpensive, do a great job - quality photos - and they are shipped within 2 days.

Once in a great while I print a few at home.

Liz

We've done this poll a few times, but it's time to do it again. How does everyone here get prints made?

Printing Quick Poll >>

Feel free to add comments or elaborate here. I'm curious as to how our printing habits have changed over the past few years. For instance, I hardly print anything anymore. Almost everything goes straight to the Web. I care little about prints for myself. I pretty much only have prints made if someone pays me for a print.

How about you? How do you print and how much do you print?

[dmm96452]

I use a local lab (Ritz) for anything up to 8x10. Since the people at Ritz told me it would take 2-3 weeks to get anything larger back I've decided to try an online lab. I got advice from one of the forums here and submitted my first order to MPIX yesterday and expect the prints to be in today. I'll post another reply when I get a look at them.

[dmm96452]

The 8x12 and 16x24 prints were fantastic. They arrived as expected and were very well packaged. The cost + shipping was about the same as having it done locally and I don't think the prints could have come out any better.

One bit of learning for me is that if I'm going to blow a print up to 16x24 I need to pay more attention to details. A few little things like twigs that are no big deal at 8x10 or 8x12 are considerable more noticable at 16x24. Oh well, I'm hear to learn!

[masdog]

Right now, I usually don't get prints made. When I need to, there is a photography store about 20 miles away that allows me to upload the images via some specialized software.

[PlantedTao]

I've been going to my local Photography School and doing my own B&W prints.
http://www.pcnw.org/
This is the main reason I haven't posted on the forums in awhile. One day, I hope to have a home computer and scanner so I can start getting my prints onto the web, again.
My approach may seem 20th century, but I have learned a lot by going this route.

Cheers.

[Photo-John]

I've been going to my local Photography School and doing my own B&W prints.
http://www.pcnw.org/

I'm glad you posted! It's nice that someone can speak from the darkroom point of view, in this digital age. I still think that working in a wet darkroom is the best way to get an intimate understanding of exposure and the whole photographic process.

[megan]

Well, I'm still chemical not digital, so I still go to a lab. My current show is all C-prints - Modernage in NYC did an AWESOME job.

I actually will get prints of stuff just for me. If I waited until someone wanted to buy a print, I'd never get anything enlarged! I like seeing the images enlarged - you can see so much more, and really truly decide if it's a worthy photo. It's nice to have a book full of 8X10's to pull out and show people. I don't have a lap top, MP3 player or cell phone to whip out and show people my work on the spot. The old fashioned way still works fine for me. I think it's important to enlarge images to learn from them and improve your work. With digital you can look at it on your computer, but I like having something tangible, physical to ponder. I like to put the enlargements up and live with them awhile. After a couple months, you might get sick of the image, and then you know maybe you were more attracted to the moment you took it in than the actual photo.

That said, I do enjoy my little Epson ink jet. I can do a preliminary enlargement from a scan if I'm not sure if it's worthy of dropping my yuppie allowance on a print. I also LOVE seeing color on the dead matte - something you CAN'T get with chemical prints, but is soooooooooo sexy. I make little prints of color images, window matte them, and give them as little giftees.

Megan

[drg]

I responded other because I do some of all of the above. I do very little darkroom work anymore but occasionally pull out the timers and clean up the flow tanks, check the calibration of electronic thermometers and spend the night with film and my old buddy Besler.

It is way tooooo easy to play around with profiles, calibrations, digital files, and the phone saying "well, how does that look?" than to do it all myself.

I have only one person in the universe besides myself that I trust sheet film to and they are currently in Europe .

I encourage anybody who hasn't used a darkroom to try out the "magic" at least few times before they are all gone forever.

- drg

[Seb]

We've done this poll a few times, but it's time to do it again. How does everyone here get prints made?

Printing Quick Poll >>

Feel free to add comments or elaborate here. I'm curious as to how our printing habits have changed over the past few years. For instance, I hardly print anything anymore. Almost everything goes straight to the Web. I care little about prints for myself. I pretty much only have prints made if someone pays me for a print.

How about you? How do you print and how much do you print?

Well I guess that I am the outsider here as I print everything by myself on my HP 8750.

I used to send files to two pro labs but quite frankly, it appears that traditionnal photo process don't do the trick with digital files, the colors were oftenly off, nuances were lost.... With my printer, I sometimes get so-so prints but its my fault (flawed post processing) when it happens. When I get things right, the result surpass (or at the very least equal) what I got from the lab when I shot film.

On a side note, while I have no experience with dark room, I don't think that digital printing is all that easy. I mean, it can be if you are willing to live with what an uncalibrated setup can provide and that you are not that discriminating. However, acheiving truly high quality results is an art that I am trying to learn. You have to use judgment to get the results. To sum it up, it's just a different mean to an end.

Seb