- Joined
- Jul 14, 2011
- Messages
- 13,685
- Format
- 8x10 Format
There are several big labs right here on the Calif coast which can easily compete with that kind of service, with even a greater range of services. But they apparently can't offer Maxima at the present time. But in my opinion, there's simply no way to top the look of Fujiflex Supergloss, which is available. I'm well equipped to do my own printing, and can do better framing than any of those places, up to 4 ft wide, at least, but not as a commercial service - strictly for my own work.
I was perusing Weldon Color Lab's pricing yesterday; and I couldn't begin to make the same size prints at the reasonable pricing they offer due to their high-volume laser exposure throughput. On the other hand, there's nothing quite like real home cookin' - if you want it done "right" you need to do it yourself. But these same big labs will accept people's own profiled files, based upon their own lab drum scans; so a real degree of self-control is still possible in between. I prefer true optical enlargement the whole distance; but that amount of labor is getting harder and harder to justify in any high volume commercial environment. Weldon will due traditional enlarger black and white printing, but charges way more for that than big color laser or inkjet prints; it's the time and labor expense involved.
There's also Bayphoto in Scott's Valley slightly uphill from Santa Cruz, in the Monterey Bay area. No place on earth has seen more refinement in commercial color carbon print R&D than that neighborhood, along with other "sandwich" color processes. All of that is now water under the bridge, so to speak, and past ... well, not entirely (*). But it did give their predecessors, like Charles Bergger, a running start with scanners and the newer printing methods. Strangely, just last week a very rare actual tornado (EF 1) transpired there amidst the redwoods and ripped right down the main street of Scott's Valley tossing cars, trucks, and trees. Remarkably, no one was hurt.
* Charles Bergger has recently released his Ultrastable II color pigment "carbon" printing system, using dichromate-free nontoxic ingredients; but that topic properly belongs to the Alt Printing section. It was toxicity which partially led to the short span of his previous commercial true pigment printing ventures of the Polaroid Permanent Process, Ultrastable (first version), and Evercolor.
I was perusing Weldon Color Lab's pricing yesterday; and I couldn't begin to make the same size prints at the reasonable pricing they offer due to their high-volume laser exposure throughput. On the other hand, there's nothing quite like real home cookin' - if you want it done "right" you need to do it yourself. But these same big labs will accept people's own profiled files, based upon their own lab drum scans; so a real degree of self-control is still possible in between. I prefer true optical enlargement the whole distance; but that amount of labor is getting harder and harder to justify in any high volume commercial environment. Weldon will due traditional enlarger black and white printing, but charges way more for that than big color laser or inkjet prints; it's the time and labor expense involved.
There's also Bayphoto in Scott's Valley slightly uphill from Santa Cruz, in the Monterey Bay area. No place on earth has seen more refinement in commercial color carbon print R&D than that neighborhood, along with other "sandwich" color processes. All of that is now water under the bridge, so to speak, and past ... well, not entirely (*). But it did give their predecessors, like Charles Bergger, a running start with scanners and the newer printing methods. Strangely, just last week a very rare actual tornado (EF 1) transpired there amidst the redwoods and ripped right down the main street of Scott's Valley tossing cars, trucks, and trees. Remarkably, no one was hurt.
* Charles Bergger has recently released his Ultrastable II color pigment "carbon" printing system, using dichromate-free nontoxic ingredients; but that topic properly belongs to the Alt Printing section. It was toxicity which partially led to the short span of his previous commercial true pigment printing ventures of the Polaroid Permanent Process, Ultrastable (first version), and Evercolor.
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