Balancing quality and costs: ordering digital vs analog color prints

[Dwig]

... I guess I always hope that my negatives will have some extra "magic" if they were printed by someone else in the darkroom.

If they did it would be someone else's magic, and not yours.

I work as the main imaging tech for an art photographer here in Key West. I regularly deal with our own prints on paper and canvas which we do on large format Epson printer. I also handle creating files for printing by outside sources when we need other substrates (aluminum, glass, ...) or sizes larger than our 44"x120" in-house limit. Our originals are either 35mm scans, usually from Velvia 50 and done with an Imacon 848, or digital camera files, usually from a Nikon D800.

We recently ran some experiments with having prints made on Fuji Crystal Archive (RA-4 process) paper. The prints we received from Griffin Editions in NYC were excellent. They were somewhat different than our in-house prints but the different print media all have their different characteristics. In general, though, there were a very good match to the overall look of our in-house prints. I don't feel one or the other were "better" and both were better in many ways to any optically printed color negs I've ever dealt with in my 40 some-odd years of day to day handling of prints.

 

[BillBingham2]

I have to agree that the price of $20 USD for an 8x10 wet print it's not that out of line. The last thing I did that way was back in mid 80's and it was 11x14 was not too much more in 1980's dollars.

I'm completely thumbs when it comes to color prints, could do B&W, but I never got color prints to come out.

I have to agree with not wanting to turn over your negatives/slide to anyone I can not reach out and "adjust", but that's me.

B2

 

[Mcary]

+1

It turns out the traditional wet-chemical c-print is a rare beast.

However truly excellent c-prints are possible using paper media sensitive to lasers or LED lights. A local pro lab in my city produces lovely c-print results. I was particularly surprised at how faithfully shadow regions were rendered from a 35mm color negative scan. I did use their calibration profile with LR.

MPIX has served me well too. So far I've found using their in-house color correction option consistently delivers the goods. They don't use the term c-print though despite using laser-based technologies and paper for high priced prints.

I plan to give AdoramaPix a try based on the comments above.

Have always been extremely pleased with the prints I get from AdoramaPix and generally use them for all my digital print with the exception of digital B&W prints which I go through MPIX as they offer Ilford B&W paper/process which Adorama no longer does.