> Can you tell us more about what makes one photo lab better than another?
Well, there are 4 mini-labs in my city: Wal-Mart, The PhotoLab at
Your Independant Grocer, Bruno's Photofinishing and Royal Studio.
Everybody should have a general idea about a lab in a Wal-Mart store,
stretching of chemicals, toddlers running things, etc.
Bruno's is a small hole-in-the-wall operation with employer/owner. The
printing machine has no monitor, just a "viewing hole" where the negative
being printed can be seen. This is like painting in the dark only being able
to use an educated guess and check system to choose your colours. The hole
basis of this system is that the person printing must guess at the density
and colour adjustment made to each print. If the printer was wrong at
choosing colour or density he/she will have to reprint the picture after
observing the mistake(s) made. Sometimes if the print is "alright" he/she
might let it go.
Royal Studio would be considered the premier lab in this city. The have
a small(!) selection of B&W chemicals and photography items. They feature
custom framing and all the features of a mid-sized mini-lab including some
basic digital services. Their machine is a full-featured digital behemoth
of a thing that will even make index prints. They are able to place a film
in the auto mask and have it come out as 24 (or other amount) of prints
without so much as a supervisory glance.
The Photolab at the YIG store has 7 employees, which means 7 different
ways of doing things. The printing machine features a colour "balanced"
monitor. The printer picks the density and colour adjustment for each
individual print.
Given all of this, in my opinion the lab at the grocery store is your
best bet for consumer films. Each print is exposed after being checked as
opposed to being guess at or not loked at all. For professional films it is
best not to send them to any mini lab. The channels that are used for each
film are not optomized for pro films. Any minilab will have 100 or more
consumer films go through the printer before they have one roll of pro film.
As the channels have to be re-balanced every now and then due to
deteriorization of the printer's filters, only a few minilabs will take the
time to perfectly balance the channels for pro film. Earlier I put colour
balanced in brackets becuase usually the case is far from the truth. I have
seen the colours on a print totally clash against the colours displayed upon
the monitor.
> From experience I know that the operator of the printing machine to some
> extent controls the color balance of the print,to what extent does the
> proper mix? quality and freshness of the developing chemicals have on the
> quality of the final print?
The operator has most of the control. As the chemicals are exactly
"changed" there is not too much change in the freshness of them. The
printer puts out a certain amount of chemicals per print into a waste
collection system. Whatever the printer dumps must be replaced, in this way
the chemicals that are used for the actual development of each print is
tightly within the same condition at all times. In fact, every morning and
night a control strip (pre-exposed paper) is run through the printer and
later analyzed. When the results are plotted onto a graph one can see that
their is minimal fluctuation in the condition of chemicals and subsequently
in the quality of every print.
> Does the freshness of the developer chemical matter much?
Im not quite certain about the procedure in other labs, but in mine, the
developer yeilds fairly similar results print to print. BTW, I work in the
grocery store lab. When I first started I always went to Royal, thinking
they would have the best quality. While in a Photography course I met the
owner of Bruno's so I began going there. I would not have even thought of
going to the grocery store lab. Now that I've seen how my lab does things I
would not even consider getting prints done at Royal, and I would have to be
assured that any print I had done at Bruno's would be subject to a re-do
policy.
Josh Lohuis
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