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Hi D70 users in Sydney,

Where do you guys normally develop your digital shots?

IIRC, Big W - or at least the one in Winston Hills, has 6x4 for 33 cents each, using Afga machine.

I've done prints from Teds (also Afga lab), and Hardly Normal (Fuji). One place I avoid is Konica Express outlets - I haven't been satisfied with prints from their machines.

Anything larger than 6x4 I find aren't cost effective done externally, so I print them at home on my Ca..ca...can... inkjet, with premium priced OEM cartridges and OEM branded paper (nothing else is as effective as C4n0n's own paper I find).

Onyx, what does IIRC stand for? Individual Internet Relay Chat

I got some prints done at BigW on sat and they were very washed out. I did select the AGFA enhance button onthe machine. Should you do this when the photos have already been enhanced in Photoshop? I should take the same one back and print it again without the enhance thing.

I've only ever used Harvey Norman, the Aburn store. Been happy to date with what I got.

I just cropped etc to what I wanted and told them to print them off as is....no problems.

if you want professional quality stuff go to http://www.photoking.com/index.html in Randwick.

They are a bit disorganised but do fantastic prints at a reasonable price.

Otherwise, I find anywhere with a Fuji machine generally does a good job (Hardly Normal etc)

IIRC = if I recall correctly.

You can do Fuji online but only up to 10x15

http://www.fujicolor.com.au/en/Content/Home.asp

Onyx wrote:Anything larger than 6x4 I find aren't cost effective done externally, so I print them at home on my Ca..ca...can... inkjet, with premium priced OEM cartridges and OEM branded paper (nothing else is as effective as C4n0n's own paper I find).

I love your inability to say the C word... you made me laugh, here have a smiley-face sticker (:))

Back to the topic.. don't forget Ted's $2 enlargements

Onyx wrote:Anything larger than 6x4 I find aren't cost effective done externally, so I print them at home on my Ca..ca...can... inkjet, with premium priced OEM cartridges and OEM branded paper (nothing else is as effective as C4n0n's own paper I find).

Hi Onyx,

What about color management? Are you using native profiles or you made own profiles? And what's your C4n0n's model is?

For professional quality and choice try out Pixel Perfect in Abercrombie St, Sydney. Highly recommend it.

Hlop wrote:Hi Onyx,

What about color management? Are you using native profiles or you made own profiles? And what's your C4n0n's model is?

Hi Hlop, I'm using the native profiles, included with the printer driver CD (specific for the paper type and print quality setting), Photoshop's Ctrl+Y toggles between viewing colourspace and simulated print colours which I find to be quite accurate. I'm not too fussed with colour consistency (ie. matching monitor) as I've come to know the characteristics of the printer now and compensate for it during the image editing stage (eg. it prints darker than it renders onscreen), but I realise correct monitor calibration will eliminate this need to manually compensate.

The printer itself is a very cheap entry level inkjet model, now outdated with the current Pixma range; but it does fantastically for what I want it to do - upto 4800x1200dpi, reasonable speed for photos and super fast for text printing.

There's a neat little PDF I downloaded, PDF Canon ICC Profile Guide. I forgot where I got it from (probably not off the official printer support site), it contains a few handy hints regarding colour management, profiling, conversion (intents) and printer settings (specific to Canon models of course) to get the most out of printing wide gamut images.

A little off subject, yesterday I went to get an enlargement from a Fuji machine. A girl helped me eith the process.

When I got to the image part, the image looked all washed out on the screen. She then proceeded to darken the image. I asked her how close the screen was to the print. Reply Ohh sorta OK.

I then had to convince her just to print it without changes.She then wanted to adjust it on the main PC thats hooked to the printer/machine as she said that gave better results. Still I said dont do anything to it jsut print it.

I then convinced her to print me a 6x4 so if it need adjusting we could from there.

It turned out just fine with no enhancement, if she had darkened it like she wanted to the image would have been terible.

Now I ask for no enhancement

MATT

My experience so far with getting shots printed.

I took a Test CD of 15 shots..that covered a range of topics, from landscapes to faces to skys etc to each of the following places. I wanted to see a cross section of colours and contrasts printed.

Fletchers Photographics - Good quality but I had to tell them to turn on some function of their machine called 'AUTO CR' to compensate for shots taken on digital cameras. Without this turned on the photos looked washed out like the Big W ones. Costs as low as 0.50c for 100+. They print on a Fuji digital printer usng Fuji paper.

BigW - cheap prints but quality is crap..very washed out. They use Agfa machine and paper. An ex-graphic designer at my work said that the Agfa quality should have been better from her experience. It may have been due to the 15year behind the counter doing my prints

Kodak - Better than Big W but couldn't match Fletchers. 0.65c for 100+

Vision Graphics Pro Lab - Almost the same as Fletchers but still very good, however very expensive at low volumes. They use Frontier Digital Lab printed on Fuji paper. They get cheaper than Fletchers (0.45c) once the quantity reaches 150+, and then get even cheaper at 250, 350 etc.

Naasif

Matt, your experience mirrors mine from a Fuji Frontier machine at Hardly Normals in Broadway. The preview screens there made photos looked very bright and washed out, which I commented on - but the assistant reassured me it was the monitor's inaccuracy and that the prints will be fine. They were.

I've only ever had bad experiences with Konica Express machines - on both occasions the colours were not favourable and there was a general lack of contrast.

Onyx wrote:Matt, your experience mirrors mine from a Fuji Frontier machine at Hardly Normals in Broadway. The preview screens there made photos looked very bright and washed out, which I commented on - but the assistant reassured me it was the monitor's inaccuracy and that the prints will be fine. They were.

I got a large bunch of photos printed at Hardly Normals in Broadway and they all came out fine too.

Well Onyx, at least the assistant realised that, the chick I had wanted to adjust.

Step back from the machine and just print my prints grr...

MATT

Hi

has anyone tried the Teds $2 enlargements?? any comments??

cheers

I got 8 photos printed at Teds in Canberra Civic and I was happy with the result... I will go back and print more before the end of the promotion (end of Feb I believe).

Link.

I've tried numerous places in Coffs, Kodak were once good but now too expensive, Hardly Normal cheap and nasty, local printers unsatisfactory, I've found BIGW to be pretty good and cheap for basic 6x4's and I get hundreds and hundreds printed there. Having said that, I find their Agfa PC terminals very unreliable but I put up with it for the price.

I never bother with printing stuff at home. BIGW online ordering enlargement system takes at least a week, sometimes it's good, other times colour's not so good and I don't pay for an enlargement if the colour is not right.

Max

focus wrote:Hi

has anyone tried the Teds $2 enlargements?? any comments??

cheers

Sorry to dig up an old thread (at least I'm searching ) but I have just received two 8x12 print enlargments from Teds (melbourne).

I PP both of them and selected no adjustments. one came out VERY good and the other I am a little dissapointed in, this could be my monitor though as it seems the blues are too strong (the one that came out very nice does not have much blue in it).

All in all I am happy with the prints however I will be looking into a monitor callibration

W00DY

Harvey Norman express in Chatswood is very good. Have been developing my images there over 5 months.

I have used Harvey Norman a few times recently, VERY happy with the service and results - Harvey Norman at Balgowlah, Jess the assistant always goes out of her way to help me.


Geoff.