"Developing" digital camera pics?

CanadianGuy

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\"Developing\" digital camera pics?

Hi all. I know I mentioned this in my last thread about my new camera, but I want more specific feedback on this subject.

Which method does everyone prefer to "develop" their digital camera pictures? I haven't developed my first set of pictures yet. I've transferred them to my computer. (Stupid me, I don't have a burner or printer, and can't put them back on the camera.)

All methods I've heard of so far are:

1) Sending your pictures to a photo center via the internet, have them print the pictures and then mail them back to you? (Don't you have to download their software, and then it takes a REALLY long time to send the files?)

2) Print them at home. (More expensive?)

3) Burn the files onto a CD and go to the photo store.

Also, what's a typical limit of an ISP's email storage? I'm stuck with my honeymoon pics on my computer and need to get them to my Dad's computer. All 178 pictures take up about 90 MB. HELP!!

Thank you so much.
 

LEDagent

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Re:

I hope you don't plan on printing ALL of your stored pictures, because either way you do it, they are going to get expensive.

I have printed all of my digital pictures from home. I had about 250 pictures i wanted to send to my family back in the Philippines, and i wanted to know the most economical way to print them out. If I went with your option #3 and brought my photos to a local photo lab, like Ritz camera, it would cost me about 120-130 dollars to print. It costs, on average, 45-50 cents per 4x5 photo print if you bring it to a photo lab.

I decided to buy my own photo paper and print them on my printer. I printed out all 250 photos on one print cartridge and i still had some photo paper and ink left to spare. I figured i spent less than 75 dollars to print all my pictures.

If you have a printer that is capable of photo-quality printing (most printers are now), then i suggest printing them at home. If you don't have a printer, i would invest in one if you plan on printing a lot of your digital pictures - It'll pay off in the long run.
 

snuffy

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Re: \"Developing\" digital camera pics?

Put them back on your memory card and use it to transport them. The software that came with your camera should allow you to do this. Most photo places can then take them off your card and make prints. Using a card reader plugged into your computer is the easiest way I've found to get files on or off the memory card.
 

dw_1984

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Re:

If you have a Costco nearby and have a membership, you could take them there. I don't know what format they accept but you could check.

For me it's around $0.29CDN each (I think).

Daniel
 

The_LED_Museum

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Re: \"Developing\" digital camera pics?

Most email servers quit after the server inbox on the recipient's end reaches 10MB.

So unless your computer and your dad's computer are networked together, you'll need to assemble at least 10 messages with less than 10MB each, and email them to him one at a time. I know this because I've gotten "bounced mail" messages for mail that exceeded 10MB in size on AT&T's server, and they're one of the big guys. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/icon15.gif

Once the 10MB email is downloaded off the server and into your dad's computer, you can send another 10MB.

I don't have any printer or place suggestions for printing digital pictures, as I've never done it.
 

paulr

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re: developing digital pics

You mean printing them? Best is to just print them at home. Good printers start at under $100. Canon makes some nice ones for that price.

Also, get yourself a CD burner, also well under $100, even under $50 if you shop around. Don't worry about speed, even a 4x one (tortoise like by today's standards) can burn 600 MB to disk in 15 minutes or so. Back up all your computer files regularly, not just your photos. Keep a backup at home and another one in your safe deposit box. Your computer will definitely crash sooner or later (everyone's does eventually) and you will be glad you had backups.

Emailing a picture now and then is ok, but emailing large quantities of pictures is usually an overload. If you want to give 178 pictures to your dad, burn them to CD and give him that.
 

iddibhai

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Re: re: developing digital pics

printing at home will get expensive. i've found the best way is to find a local walmart or eckerds or some such place that is similar in canada (drug store, large volume discount retailer etc), and see if they have the fuji frontier machines along with an aladdin kiosk. take what u want to print there (on any digital format, floppy, CF, SM, SD, CD, etc), and the aladdin kiosk will take you through the steps, and send the final request to the frontier machines for output. right now, fuji frontier is the top of the heap with no competition in my opinion.
 

paulr

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Re: re: developing digital pics

Printing at home is so much more convenient than getting it done somewhere that it's worth some extra expense. However, it does add up if you want to print a lot--some printers have lower ink costs than others, so shop. If you're like most digicam users though, you'll look at most of your pics on the computer and only print one out once in a while.
 

iddibhai

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Re: re: developing digital pics

for the occasional one off, home printing is the way to go, but for more than a few, the home costs add up since you need premium paper and photo inks that cost a lot. then there's the whole issue of what you see on screen doesn't always match what the printer puts up (gamma, all that good stuff). a whole lot of headache can be saved, as well and superb results to be had from frontier machines. no, i don't have anything to gain--i just have been shooting for a while, and frontier is the next best thing to your own darkroom.
 

Flotsam

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Re: re: developing digital pics

I had excellent results from ofoto.com - prints from scanned pictures (my scanner was ok, but not great) came out very nice. It was about $.30/pic - bonus is that friends/family can log on to your site at ofoto & pick & choose what they want.

If you have dial-up, it can be slow. If you have broadband, it's not so bad to upload your pics. I didn't need any special software from ofoto.

Sam
 

ZENGHOST

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Re: re: developing digital pics

I don't usually have that many photos to print at a time so I usually take mine to Costco for 20 cents per print (4x6). Printing at home will cost about a buck per 8.5x11 sheet plus the cost of ink. Also, I wouldn't trust an inkjet printed photo to be archival. Maybe if it was a dye sublimation printer, but I'd prefer to have mine professionally printed. You may want to invest in one of those "thumb drives" that are fairly cheap now. You can store 128MB (depending on which size you choose) on something that's the size of a keychain flashlight for about 50 bucks. For sending large files you can also use something like AOL or MSN Messenger's file transfers which will transfer a file directly to a second party. I haven't used it in a couple of years, but it used to work well when I had to move 300MB+ files.

edited to add: CD burners are probably the best way to store photos, though. CD's are cheap enough to send to someone and tell them to print it out.
 

markus_i

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Re: \"Developing\" digital camera pics?

'Printing' is not the same as 'printing' in this context. If you print your pictures at home, they can look very good - current inkjet printers can do that very well. But you're going to have to spend some money first for the printer, photo paper and trying out how to set up printer and software for best results. Advantage of that approach is that you can have the prints instantly. Disadvantage is that inkjet prints are by far less lightproof than 'prints' from a photo service, i.e. they'll lose their color much faster.
'Prints' from a photo service aren't (usually, there are exceptions) inkjet prints but photographic prints on light-sensitive paper. They're much more durable (both against light and handling/humidity) than inkjet prints.
If you want to keep on using your digital camera, your best option is probably:
- get a CD (or even DVD) burner, you'll need one anyway eventually for archiving the pictures
- burn the pictures onto CD and bring/send them to a printing/photo service (at least over here, most photo services will accept digital images on CD)

If you don't want the CD burner, a USB memory stick comes in handy for transferring the pictures from one PC to another (provided they have USB ports...). They're cheap (around here, lowest prices now run around 30 euros for 128 megs) and usually hassle-free.

HTH
Bye
Markus (no, I don't have a digital camera yet - I use a slide scanner)
 

itsme1234

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Re: \"Developing\" digital camera pics?

In Germany you could get 20 10x15 prints (that's 6x4 across the ocean) for 3 EUR (that's 0.15 EUR/piece). This is 100% from Kodak, not only it's Kodak gold paper but all the processing it's made by Kodak. Order from saturn.de and pick up the pictures from any Saturn store, so no extra charges.
And now they have another offer: 50 pcs for 6.99 (slightly cheaper). There's no way to get the same quality/price with desktop printing.
 

6pOriginal

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Re:

I think PC magazine or someone did a "shoot out" couple months ago, and Wal Mart got the "best bang for the buck" they use Fuji printing system, and were cheaper than others (i think it was around 25ish cents), but unlike others, they won't do any adjustments to your photos (if your photos are underexposed, they won't try to correct it...etc).

For myself, I have a Epson 820, and I like to do everything from touching up to the final prints by myself /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif
 

CanadianGuy

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Developing digital pics, Jeers to Wal-Mart

Thanks for all the replies. I think I'll just transfer the pics from the camera to my Dad's (better, newer, and faster) computer. Then I can burn the image files to CD and go to Costco or somewhere better than Wal Mart.

Wal-Mart developed 15 of our 35mm rolls from the *disposable* cameras at our wedding, and a few pics were printed on panoramic paper!!! Like, HELLO processor lady, are you stupid? She says "They're developed like that because of the camera." How the (bleep) can that be when it's not a panoramic camera to begin with? Anyways...

Oh, Wal-Mart of Canada's "online photo centre" is a piece of (bleep) too. You can upload your pics via an upload webpage or with a crappy program called PCUploader. I couldn't get either way to work right, and they took WAY too long. I was getting errors and stuff, and it drove me nuts. Nevermind the wait while I uploaded the pics, only to have the process not work every time! ARGH, I'm frustrated!

Thanks for all your input everyone. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif
 

K A

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Re: Developing digital pics, Jeers to Wal-Mart

[ QUOTE ]
CanadianGuy said:
Wal-Mart developed 15 of our 35mm rolls from the *disposable* cameras at our wedding, and a few pics were printed on panoramic paper!!! Like, HELLO processor lady, are you stupid? She says "They're developed like that because of the camera." How the (bleep) can that be when it's not a panoramic camera to begin with? Anyways...


[/ QUOTE ]

This I can kinda explain, but not real technical ;-)
Our 1 Hour Photo machine at work does this at times also. It IS the machine to blame. NOT the operator!

Some cameras, wether they be normal 35mm or disposables, can take normal & panoramic prints on the same roll. Developing the negatives is not any different for these mixed rolls. Its when it comes time to print the roll when the headache starts.

Our Gretag Imaging machine can be set to print
1) Standard prints and ignore panoramics
2) Panoramic prints and ignore standard
3) Fully Automatic

The problem is #3 because thats what the machine stays at.. Its time consuming to flip back and forth between printing ONLY standards and then ONLY panoramics because then you have to run the roll through twice, letting the machine ignore the prints its not supposed to make. Hence why its always on Automatic.

The machine detects if its standard or panoramic due to the size of the frame on the negative. But when you have a frame where most of the picture is in the middle (clear negative on top of bottom of frame), the computer then thinks its a panoramic print and sets everything up to print that frame as panoramic.

And when you have a line of 10 or so OTHER film rolls to print after that one the operator does not have the time to reprint that frame as a standard print (some people WANT their film in an hour even when told itll be longer). The machine acts as an assembly line and can start printing the next roll after the preceeding roll has finished. Usually the operator is busy setting up more film to be developed, helping customers, or packaging up the previous roll to pay any attention to the machine when it goes into panoramic mode.

I can only hope they did not charge you extra for any misprinted panoramics. Since they DO use more paper/chemicals to process they usually get charged a bit more.
 

CanadianGuy

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Re: Developing digital pics

No, they didn't charge me for it, I don't think. I guess you guys get a bum rap because many people think you don't know what you're doing. Sorry. But I bet there's still a lot of employees who don't know or care what they're doing, and just work there to make a buck. One time a few years ago I was told by a processor that their preview screen on the machine was acting up and that they could only "guess" if the colors were right. Yech!

See ya
 

iddibhai

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Re: Developing digital pics

so you have walmarts in canada too? then try find one with fuji frontier (or the same in costco or sams or whatnot). i think it will be worth the trouble really.
 

K A

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Re: Developing digital pics

[ QUOTE ]
CanadianGuy said:
No, they didn't charge me for it, I don't think. I guess you guys get a bum rap because many people think you don't know what you're doing. Sorry. But I bet there's still a lot of employees who don't know or care what they're doing, and just work there to make a buck. One time a few years ago I was told by a processor that their preview screen on the machine was acting up and that they could only "guess" if the colors were right. Yech!

See ya

[/ QUOTE ]

Our machine does not have a preview screen sadly. I wish it did! The color problem has to do with the brand of film (Kokak, Fuji, ..) and the speed (100, 200, etc.). Each brand requires just a bit different amount of colors to come out looking just right.

The machine reads the barcode that's on the bottom of the film. That tells it brand, speed, and frame number (1, 1A, 2, 2A,..). When the barcode doesn't match what's inside the computers memory it does not know what to set the machine to use.

By glancing at the film we can see what brand/speed of film it is, as its printed along the upper edge. We can then set the machine manually, using the choices inside the computers memory. Most of the time pictures come out just fine, but we always come across the odd roll which, when printed, comes out with either too much Red, Green, or Blue. Then its a pain to color correct that.
 
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