Print at Costco or at home?

[CheckSix]

I've heard a lot about the discussion between printing at Costco and at home. My friend and I have argued over this for a bit. My question is, is it really cheaper and better to print at Costco (or Walgreens or anywhere else) than at home on a photo printer?

[Patrickfromva]

I suppose it migh boil down to what resolution do they scan it, what correction do they do, what do they use for printing? I'd be surprised if costco had made much progress above 2 megapixles in a 35mm negative.
Just my thoughts

[Blues]

Read an article about 6 months ago in our local paper (San Jose Mercury News - they have a good technology section). It said that, on average, it costs about twice as much to print locally (cost of ink, paper, etc) versus low-price commercial outfits (Costco, etc). This is consistent with my limited experience.

[NHL]

Originally Posted by CheckSix

I've heard a lot about the discussion between printing at Costco and at home. My friend and I have argued over this for a bit. My question is, is it really cheaper and better to print at Costco (or Walgreens or anywhere else) than at home on a photo printer?

... Can you print photographic grade 11x14 or 12x18 for only $2.99 from a Costco's Noritsu processor at home?

[Patrickfromva]

[quote="NHL"]

Originally Posted by CheckSix

Can you print photographic grade 11x14 or 12x18 for only $2.99 from a Costco's Noritsu processor at home?

Interesting, do you have another link that gives some details? The Noritsu link was more for equipment, and checking out what costco has online showed promise, but still limited to 5 mb file size, and their prices were different.

[NHL]

Interesting, do you have another link that gives some details? The Noritsu link was more for equipment, and checking out what costco has online showed promise, but still limited to 5 mb file size, and their prices were different.

... This is actually the price that is posted on the wall @ their MD/VA stores. For 8x10 and 8x12 it's only $1.99, and in the teen for 4x6's.

I don't know anything about their downloading policy since the Noritsu's terminals at the stores that I used accept CF, sD/MMC, MemoryStick and CD as input. Floppy disks are also accepted but one has to leave them in the prepaids envelope. The turn around time is 24hr (in by 5-6pm and pickup time is noon next day) which I think is hard to beat for both the convenience (and cost)!

BTW I notice that if you go on-line the Costco service routes you to the Kodak Picture Center... a separate service sponsored by Costco, and you can use the Kodak processing at their stores too which is priced higher and takes several days longer. The price I quoted is for prints done locally right @ their stores on their own machines and not affiliated with Kodak! 8)

[voxmagna]

...........I'd be surprised if costco had made much progress above 2 megapixles in a 35mm negative.
Just my thoughts..........

Most printers photo printers (Fuji Frontiers) are laser scanning and photo printing at 300 dpi, with some Kodaks at 400dpi without interpolation as far as I know.

If you want to print 10X8, do you have an 8Mpix camera? because anything less and the printer is doing better than your camera!

I like prints like my Granny took which are permanent and won't fade if I or my dependents look at them 20 years on. To compare like with like, compare the cost of running your inkjet with archival inks - and a lot gets thrown away in the obligatory cleaning cycles.

The main thing with photo printing, is to find places that will genuinely take your big MPix files without down scaling and they have reasonably fast upload terminals if doing a batch of 25 or more. Uploading over the web can be very slow unless you have a fast connection and the service offers ftp file upload, like the one I have used in UK.

My printing strategy is to inkjet those prints I might need immediately, or in a few hours, but include those files and others in batches for photo prints. VOX

[NHL]

Vox

The Noritsu's @ Costco does 400dpi on silver halide paper up to 12x18 from any input media!

http://www.noritsu.com/2921.pdf

:P

[voxmagna]

NHL, Thanks, I'm not aware of these in UK, I'll email them and see if anybody's using them here. I've found the Fuji prints a little vivid for my tastes - even after reducing saturation, so I'd like to compare on another printer. Regards VOX

[NHL]

BTW since there's no premium doing 8x12 and 12x18 over 8x10 and 11x14... I usually pick the bigger size and they match my dSLR format with no cropping... Finding the right frames and mats size in the States is another problem however!