Information on Prints

I have recently received several requests for prints of my photos. As an amateur photographer, I have to look for commercially available options for making prints from slides. From what I can gather, several venues and their printing methods are listed below.

• Type R Print: This is direct enlargement from slides made on reversal paper. The cheapest way and offers very good quality. It is machine print for sizes up to 11"x14", and custom made for larger sizes. The service is offered by Kodak Processing Lab, formerly know as Kodalux, through the retail of Harvard/MIT Coop, and takes 5-7 business days.

• Ilforchrome Prints: Formerly known as Cibachrome print. This is the best archival quality print and the method used by museums for exhibits and collections. It is expensive, too. The price structure of a local lab (Zona Lab, Cambridge, MA) is that the first prints costs substantially high, and the second and onward prints cost about half of that of the first print. Prints are custom made, not by machines.

• Dye-Sublimation Print (from scanned image): Fairly cheap and the image can be manipulated. But the archival quality is questionable. I scan the image using Polariod SprintScan 35 scanner, and have it printed at MIT's CopyTech on Tektronix Phaser 480 dye-sublimation printer. Besides printing costs, computer time at the CopyTech costs extra at a rate of $10 per hour. Please note that sizes refer to (computer printer's) paper sizes. Actual image sizes are smaller: there is a boarder of about 0.5 inch wide at each side. Also note, at this moment, the scanner I use has some difficulty in resolving shadow details.

Here are several options that I have considered and ruled out:

• Mail Order: I am aware that it is possible to obtain Ilforchrome prints via mail order at significantly lower prices. But I am unwilling to send my originals away, unless the costs for FedEx on both ways are paid by the requester. (But by paying the costs of FedEx, the price becomes not that much lower.) On the other hand, if you know of other local labs offering lower prices than Zona Lab, I'd like to hear.

  Someday, if I could make my own Ilforchrome prints ....

• Small Prints via Cheap Interneg: If you have read enough of my web page :-) probably you have noticed that I had experimented with a cheap way of making 4"x6" prints. However, I do not want to show my photos made in this way to requesters, and I am quite fed up with the quality of machine prints from negative.

• Huge Prints: I shoot 35mm format. In general, I would not recommend any print size larger than 11x14", and 16"x24" is the ultimate limit.

• There are a few (hopefully very few) images on my web that are not printable. These shots are blurred in one way or another, although they still look quite decent on the web. I will indicate this if you happen to choose such an image. :-)