Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2005/10/02
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]Hi Mike, Yes, the Durham Costco...Cleanliness, I guess, depends on your standards...they are perfectly acceptable to me. If I brush my negs off with my staticmaster before scanning, then I need to do only a little PS cleaning before printing (no digital ICE on my scanner). I'd sometimes prefer cleaner, but that having been said, I have had _much_ worse done to my negs at University Photo in Chapel Hill, which is the closest to a pro lab that I know of in the area. Not to mention what other one-hour lab travesties have been visited on me over the years. And, indeed, what travesties I probably visited on others when I used to work in a one-hour lab in the late 1980's. Anyway, I've been a Costco only kind of guy for my C41 developing for the past couple of years and am *usually* very satisfied. I suppose there's really only one way to find out if it's as acceptable to you as it is to me... If you do try them, I suggest you write down on the envelope that you want "All Automatic Adjustments" turned off for the scanning, or else you'll end up with very contrasty, overly-saturated (to my eyes, anyway) scans. If you want to make any prints there, they have an on-line upload/ordering setup (at www.costco.com) complete with available ICC profiles. I like their lustre paper, and you can also request "no automatic adjustments" for the on-line prints. This results in some pretty decent prints. And, no, I don't work at Costco...I'm just a satisfied customer...if you go there, mention my name and they might treat you slightly better...I'm in there a lot. :) Best, Aaron Michael Volow wrote: >How nice. Since I am from Durham also I'll have to try this--I assume you >are referring to the Durham, NC Costco. I had never used them for >processing. How clean are your negatives when they are returned? > >----- Original Message ----- From: "Aaron Sandler" <aaron.sandler@duke.edu> >To: "Leica Users Group" <lug@leica-users.org> >Sent: Sunday, October 02, 2005 8:04 PM >Subject: [Leica] Contact Sheets from Costco! > > >>Maybe I'm the last person in the world to discover this, but...contact >>sheets are not dead! >> >>I had been dreaming about being able to look over contact sheets of my >>recent rolls while sitting in a cafe, and wishing that the little 4"x6" >>index prints that the one-hour lab I use at the local Costco always makes >>were big enough to be useful. I knew they could print 8x12s, so I >>thought there was no harm in asking whether they could make an 'index >>print' that size. "Of course," they said. So, today I got my first >>digital versions of contact sheets from my latest rolls and they're >>fantastic. They're cheap ($1.50 each!!!) and, even better, they are >>slightly enlarged and easier to edit than a normal contact sheet! What a >>revelation. >> >>So, now for my C-41 film, I will add the 8x12 'index print' to my >>standard order of develop and scan to CD with all automatic adjustments >>turned off. No prints, thank you very much. Grand total (with tax) $7.50 >>per roll, easy to edit, and enough quality for posting to the web. Not >>bad at all...might even make up for the increasing film costs! >> >>Hope someone finds this useful, >>Aaron