Re: 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 im****tant 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 cor****ations 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" <veldy71@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote in message 
news:WUZ6h.2732$Yy1.1926@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> babelfish <babelfish2@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> 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
>
>