First, Jim, will you be able to properly house and feed your baby grand when
it grows up?
I've been asking around about Dwayne's Photo since it was mentioned a week
or so ago. It's in Parsons, KS, not Kansas City. Parsons is a very different
place. Kansas City is a large Midwestern city with cultural resources, many
fine restaurants, and apparently more fountains than Paris. Parsons is a
small southeast Kansas town with almost no cultural resources, no decent
restaurants, and a water fountain just outside the men's room in the
McDonalds.
Dwayne's Photo is an old lab that made its mark supplying photofinishing to
small "mom and pop" drugstores. One of their specialties was/is copy prints,
a big business for old photos. This was/is the core of their business, along
with the standard develop/print business. They developed their own system
for making copies, with custom (homemade) equipment, that was very effective
and economical. At one time (I suspect this is a dying business), they were
the largest US customer for 5 inch roll reversal paper!
Lab owners will recognize this situation: After years of being mistreated by
Kodak (changes in paper, imperious attitude), they went to Fuji. Of course,
Kodak was completely flabbergasted that there could possibly be someone
unhappy. As far as anyone around here (Wichita, about a hundred or so miles
of two lane road from Parsons) knows, they are still quite successful,
although we might speculate that, as the local pharmacy falls to the chain
store, this is not a growth business.
No one I know does business with Dwayne's, as we all use pro labs. Still,
those who know it are aware that they provide good service at an affordable
price, so I wouldn't be afraid to try them for K14. No one I know had a clue
that they were doing K14, and find that fact incredible (is there still that
much of that stuff in amateur hands?). We all assume that they must save
rolls and run batches, and that they are using one of the Kodachrome
"mini-labs" that Kodak was selling ten or so years ago.
The fact is, anyone with some resources can operate a K14 process. It all
comes down to money. If you are willing to hire qualified help, and
stringently monitor the process, it can be done. If it's worth the trouble
is another question. Kodak is capable of running a K14 lab, they just don't
always choose to. It is probably easier for someone like Dwayne's to make
the commitment and stick to it, than it is for a company ruled by generally
inept, shortsighted bean counters (wasn't it in the nineties that they sold
labs, that became Qualex, then bought them back, then sold them again,
etc.?) like Kodak.
Maybe I'll give Kodachrome another chance!
Bill Pearce
< This message was delivered via the Olympus Mailing List >
< For questions, mailto:owner-olympus@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx >
< Web Page: http://Zuiko.sls.bc.ca/swright/olympuslist.html >
|