The fresh prints
Wed Aug 04, 2010 11:39 (UTC -5)Since I got my new digital camera, I’ve been astounded by the sheer hugeness (and clarity) of the images it produces. They just scream to be printed. So after my friend Natasha’s visit, during which I took hundreds of pictures, I figured she might like to have some prints to remember her trip by.
It’s a quaint idea—having photos on paper? Ha! I’ve used digital cameras exclusively since 2002, and you know how printers are. So I’ve long been content to just gaze at my photos on a screen, but now I’ve figured that having my favorites on nice Kodak paper wouldn’t be a bad idea—think of it as a paper backup. And you can’t pin lots of thin, tiny screens onto your wall (yet).
(Aside: When I was packing up all the stuff in my room a few weeks ago, I found my old cameras with film still in them. My mom got the rolls developed, and I’m looking forward to seeing the pictures [and also my mom and dad at the new house, which they started moving into on Monday].)
There are oodles ‘n’ kaboodles of web sites that send you prints of photos that you upload, so it was hard to pick out one. But I had heard good things about HP’s Snapfish, so I decided to give it a spin.
Uploading the photos was easy enough. Snapfish offers a choice of uploading the photos at full size or scaling them down to medium size and then uploading those versions. They recommend the latter for all but the largest prints, probably because it saves a great deal of time. I was concerned that the quality of the prints would suffer, but I decided to go with their recommendation. Uploading over 100 photos didn’t take long at all.
I got 20 free 4×6 prints for signing up, and I was able to get free shipping (something they normally charge a lot for) with a coupon code I found on RetailMeNot. So I ended up paying $10.44 for 136 prints (about 7.7¢ per print).
The photos arrived in a small box that contained two envelopes (like the kind you would get from having your photos developed at the drug store, except without a slot for the negatives). The first thing I noticed about the prints was that the paper was kind of thin—not super thin, but they seemed thinner than the old film prints I would get from the drug store (unless my memory is failing me). It was Kodak paper, though.
The color reproduction was pretty faithful to my monitor. I’m not an expert on colors, but a particularly colorful part of one photo seemed to be oversaturated. I don’t think this would be a problem in general, though. As for the image quality, it was great. I looked as closely as I could, and I couldn’t see any JPEG artifacts from the resizing. In fact, I discovered that my 14-megapixel camera produces much clearer snapshots than my old (cheap) film cameras (with cheap film) did.
All in all, I would recommend Snapfish if you can use the coupon code for free shipping. Even without it, it seems to be a pretty good deal. Sometimes you just need that paper backup.
A relevant link: Photographer Steve McCurry talks about shooting on the last roll of Kodachrome film ever produced. (Via J-Walk Blog)
2 comments
#1 by Kirsten: Wed Aug 04, 2010 20:27 (UTC -5)
I’ve also used the drugstore services – Walgreens and CVS both let you upload pics to their website and they will print them out and you can pick them up at the store. I usually just bring my memory card in and do it there, but either way you get real photo paper.
I’d probably only recommend Snapfish or similar sites if I wanted to share the photos and let other people order prints.
#2 by Jordon Kalilich: Wed Aug 04, 2010 23:10 (UTC -5)
I had thought of using one of the brick-and-mortar stores’ online services, but I’m pretty immobile since I don’t have a driver’s license. It’s worth it for me to have the photos delivered.