One of the criticisms of digital photography which I hear again and again is the fact that the photos are stuck on my PC where others can’t see them. The obvious solution is to have a select few printed.
So, where do you go to print your memories?
I’ve tried online printing services in the past and considered foto.com with their 9c prints. That sounds good except when you add postage fees, it isn’t that much cheaper than local priting services.
Bricks and mortor chemists and photo shops are reasonably priced, although the market leader, Spectra, have been increasing their prices, they recently slashed the cost of 6×4 prints to 17c a print.
Sam Mc Cauley Chemists have an offer until the end of January of 100 prints for 13.99 Euro using Fujifilm paper, and a local chemist here in Blarney, Walshs Pharmacy, will print 100 photos for 15 Euro using Kodak paper. Both offers only apply to 6×4 prints. I tried both and I’m impresed by the quality.
Photos submitted were from the Sony 717 (a wedding in 2004), Panasonic FZ5 and Canon 20D. Where I had shot in RAW+jpeg on the Canon, I used the “small low quality” files generated from shooting in RAW+S mode. Can I tell the difference? No! Even images with a lot of noise came out looking really well and I’m very happy.
I have 200 photos out of some 26,000 shots to show friends and relations and the memories that go along with them. The next thing to do is attempt to build nice looking frames for larger prints!
The best thing about printing? I found my favourite photo of 2005. It’s one of Jacinta in Cobh at sunset. She has a radiant smile, the light is great, and she’s so beautiful!
5 replies on “Memories of the year 2005 in print”
Have you tried Pixdiscount.ie?
I haven’t used them myself, but colleagues have and the prints were of very high quality, good gloss finish and delievered fairly quickly
I’ve been getting alot of prints from photobox lately, mostly 12×8. The service is superb and the prices aren’t too shabby either (in fact, after getting a one time *special offer* from McSweeneys not too long ago on some 12×8’s, their 50% reduction brought the price to still slightly above photobox). The only thing that lets photobox down in fact is the utterly awful Irish postal service. I ordered about 30 prints more than 10 days ago and still haven’t got them. I wouldn’t be so angry about it except it meant missing entering a competition. Bah!
Recently I’ve been investigating the long term costs involved in printing my own. After the inital outlay on a decent A4/A3 printer, would the cost of the consumables outweigh the cost of lab printing? To be continued…
I had heard something about the 100 prints offer but I didn’t realise it was finishing soon. I’ll have to get some in there so. I generally don’t put pictures of people up on Flickr so maybe the time has come to print a few off.
I hope Jacinta reads your blog btw 🙂
I’ll second Ryan on Photobox, and feel his pain on the delay in getting them through the post here! I’ve sent prints to friends in England at the same time I’ve ordered myself, they’ve received them the next day and I don’t get them for two weeks!! 🙁
Other great thing about Photobox (ok, you’re paying just that little extra for it) is being able to print larger sizes, whack them off unbelievably in Picasa if you’re using it, and, most importantly for me, have everything printed in matt. If you’re prepared to wait, Photobox (don’t forget the .ie for euro prices) rules the roost!
Yep – I’ve been impressed with Photobox too, particularly their large (A3) size prints.