 Wayne Redden |
Film Processing Is there enough difference in quality between having film sent off through Wal-mart and having it sent to a processing lab such as Mystic Lab or Clark's? Photography is a hobby for me, not a profession, but I do have my "good shots" enlarged to 8X10.
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John A. Lind |
Wayne, I give a qualified YES. I don't have experience with Mystic or Clark's. The qualification for my "YES" answer: a professional full-service lab that caters to professional commercial, studio, wedding, etc. phtographers. It's not so much developing the film as it is in making the prints, even machine prints used for proofs. A decent pro lab maintains its equipment better and takes more care in dust control, color balancing, enlarger focusing and is far more consistent in delivering top notch results. They also handle film much more carefully to keep it from being fingerprinted or scratched. If it were otherwise, pros wouldn't use them. Their livelihood depends on not only image composition, but presentation of a good print too, even if it's proofs. Using a one-hour lab, or overnight send-off to a consumer lab may suffice for your small prints, but I recommend at least trying a pro lab for an 8x10 or 8x12 to see what you get from it. Ask for a "machine print" which do not demand specialized cropping or dodging and burning. With an 8x10 size you should be able to specify cropping to center, left, right, etc. as it's not the same rectangle ratio as a 35mm film frame (which would be an 8x12 at full frame). If you want to crop it down, simply ask if they do 8x12's, get one of those and crop it down to 8x10 yourself (you get to choose how much of each end the 2" comes off of). -- John
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Robin V. Flannery |
I work in Sam's Club One Hour Photo. I can testify that we wear gloves when we are handling your film. We color correct and do our best to give our members the best prints possible. If you would like you have your photos cropped, all you have to do is ask. Yes, there is a big difference in having them done in a One Hour verses sending them in. In a One Hour Lab, you only have up to 200 rolls of film a day that your film could get mixed up with. In the big lab that your film gets sent to, you have up to 50,000 rolls of film a day being sent to them. We have several mixes happen every week in our send out. We have had only two mixes happen in the two years that our One Hour Photo has been in service. --Robin
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Heriberto Roman |
Well, at least I can tell you that Clark and York are "cheap quality labs". For years I was sending my films to Mystic Color because of their high quality and excellent prices in 5x7 developing, but since they were sold last year, things have changed a lot. They are another "Clark" type lab, with horrible colors and a complete lack of care in handling and shipping of films. If you want to be sure of what I´m saying, just run a search through photographic forums. You'llsee hundreds of complaints from their dissatisfied customers. pardon my english, it's not my first language.
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