One of the appeals of digital photography was not having stacks of useless prints that cost lots of money cluttering up the place so what with most of my stuff being digital for the last few years I haven’t bothered getting prints made until quite recently. I’d been recommended a place in town as being fairly cheap and they certainly were at £5.00 for fifty but fell foul of their desire to lighten and crop as they saw fit which was terribly annoying as I’d already prepared my photos to the correct dimensions and had no idea what degree of lightening they’d used. Sure, if you just want your basic snapshots developed then the Kodak place opposite Moor St Station in Birmingham is fine but for anything vaguely advanced my advice is to steer well clear.
I’ve tried a few online services but the best by far is Photobox, as recommended by a professional studio photographer friend. Their 6p a print offer is slightly misleading as you have to buy 1200 credits to get that price but £24 for 300 works out at 8p which is cheaper than the high street even with postage. And most importantly the quality is very good indeed with a rapid turnaround (my photos were dispatched within hours of my placing the order). I will be using them often.
I’ve been mainly getting my gig photos developed so I can put together a small portfolio to take with me when I’m photographing bands. Related to this is my using my MySpace page again purely to push the photos to musicians who might be interested. While MySpace is still an appallingly badly constructed service it does appear to work very well at this concentrated level and I’m even making use of the blog (rss) on there, though only for the gig photos. The main draw is that this is where the local bands tend to be so since I want to track and contact local bands I kinda need to be there. It’ll be interesting to see how this pans out.
FWIW the Flickr “add-on” QOOP is a neat sire but I was disappointed with the resolution used for the prints. I think they must use the screen resolution image (FWIW the Flickr “add-on” QOOP is a neat sire but I was disappointed with the resolution used for the prints. I think they must use the screen resolution image (<800 pixels in larger dimension) for the print which is not what I expected. The paper back book was nicely packaged though.
I have yet to try Apple’s iPhoto printing because they will/can not accept a non-UK credit card. International banking is not what they say it is!
So I think I’ll try Photobox sooner or later.
I did some moderately extensive research on this about 18 months ago. I selected 5 pictures, which I’d finished in Photoshop to my liking.
Most of the online services are run by photobox or a couple of other firms.
I found that Snappy Snaps were far and away the best – there was a clear, noticeable difference, even on a 6×4, in terms of definition. Second was Boots (the counter service, not the self service machines).
They mostly do a 5-10 print free trial, so you can also do this research yourself, or alterately, get about 100 free prints..
Your mileage may vary.
The potential problem with Snappy Snaps (possibly the best ever name for a photo developing service ever!), Boots and other high street places is it depends on what machine they’ve got installed and who’s operating it. Of course they’ll have their “best practices” and training across the chain but even so…
Still, thanks for the tips. Next time I’m in a hurry for prints I’ll seek out Snappy Snaps.
I’ve used, at a rough estimate, at least 10 different snappy snaps all across the country (mostly with film, admittedly). They have never let me down yet, although saying that is clearly tempting fate.