NickTrop
Veteran
Okay, I know this sounds like spam. It isn't and I hope the mods are okay with this. I have no affiliation with these guys, just thought I'd pass along a good deal to fellow RFFers who might be interested.
Here's the deal. I've given up on inkjets... tired of buying them, feeding them, and throwing them out when they start banding, start clogging, or otherwise break. When I started shooting 35mm film, The "wet process way" is to make a contact sheet, select a few, and work'em in the darkroom and make enlargements. This doesn't work for me... I want bunches - 6x4's or 5x7's (and only the occasional enlargement). The good, the bad, the ugly. This leaves developing and scanning as the only film option. Which - for me, means too many rolls of undeveloped film - and sweet lord do I hate scanning, then you have to deal with the fussy and unreliable consumer-level inkjet technology. A lot of work but it did yield good results when it worked. So, I turned to services. I won't diss any of the major black and white services out there, but I was pretty disappointed with their results too, and they weren't exactly cheap.
This is one of the reasons I'm doing a lot more digital now. I won't get in to all that but I think you can get a pretty decent black and white using digital and Photoshop, with not all that great of a quality difference over traditional small format - especially for small prints. (And, I'll say it again - medium format, yes, I concede, an different matter entirely...)
Okay - now I'm trying a service, Winkflash, based on reviews of their black and whites and their cost.
Bottom line, I got around 80 prints... 2/3'rds black and white on matte, the rest color and 1 or 2 5X7's I think. Here's the price with a coupon. The coupon is for your first 50 prints free.
Subtotal $2.81
Shipping $3.38
Total $6.19
The coupon is simply 50FREE typed into the coupon field after you place your order (It's good for new accounts only, 1 time use...) Their regular print price is $0.08 per print for 6x4 (And a smashing $0.25 for 5x7). They use Fuji Frontier and Crystal Archive paper.
Here is a scanned print of a black and white from a review site:
The image on the left is the digital file, the image on the right is scan of the returned print. Here's what the site said about their black and whites:
"Black and White: Winkflash avoided making our black and white photo too yellow like some other services. The photo felt like a true black and white image and didn’t favor one color of the spectrum over the other, but the picture did seem a little dark."
http://digital-photo-printing-review.toptenreviews.com/winkflash-review.html
What are my expectations? If these prints look as good as the sample I will be satisfied. I'm not expecting gallery-level stuff. However, I'm willing to bet they're better than the frankly awful (and pricey) stuff I got back from one of the major labs that process volume black and white.
Anywho - if you're like me, live in the US, and simply have a bunch of black and white scans (or color for that matter) or jpegs that you want to (but probably never will otherwise) free from their digital hard drive prison and get on paper... stuff that you wouldn't mind having prints for...
Here's a way, way cheap way to do it. Sign up for a free Winkflash account, use the coupon 50FREE.
http://www.winkflash.com/
Again - it reads like one but it's NOT an ad.
Here's the deal. I've given up on inkjets... tired of buying them, feeding them, and throwing them out when they start banding, start clogging, or otherwise break. When I started shooting 35mm film, The "wet process way" is to make a contact sheet, select a few, and work'em in the darkroom and make enlargements. This doesn't work for me... I want bunches - 6x4's or 5x7's (and only the occasional enlargement). The good, the bad, the ugly. This leaves developing and scanning as the only film option. Which - for me, means too many rolls of undeveloped film - and sweet lord do I hate scanning, then you have to deal with the fussy and unreliable consumer-level inkjet technology. A lot of work but it did yield good results when it worked. So, I turned to services. I won't diss any of the major black and white services out there, but I was pretty disappointed with their results too, and they weren't exactly cheap.
This is one of the reasons I'm doing a lot more digital now. I won't get in to all that but I think you can get a pretty decent black and white using digital and Photoshop, with not all that great of a quality difference over traditional small format - especially for small prints. (And, I'll say it again - medium format, yes, I concede, an different matter entirely...)
Okay - now I'm trying a service, Winkflash, based on reviews of their black and whites and their cost.
Bottom line, I got around 80 prints... 2/3'rds black and white on matte, the rest color and 1 or 2 5X7's I think. Here's the price with a coupon. The coupon is for your first 50 prints free.
Subtotal $2.81
Shipping $3.38
Total $6.19
The coupon is simply 50FREE typed into the coupon field after you place your order (It's good for new accounts only, 1 time use...) Their regular print price is $0.08 per print for 6x4 (And a smashing $0.25 for 5x7). They use Fuji Frontier and Crystal Archive paper.
Here is a scanned print of a black and white from a review site:
The image on the left is the digital file, the image on the right is scan of the returned print. Here's what the site said about their black and whites:
"Black and White: Winkflash avoided making our black and white photo too yellow like some other services. The photo felt like a true black and white image and didn’t favor one color of the spectrum over the other, but the picture did seem a little dark."
http://digital-photo-printing-review.toptenreviews.com/winkflash-review.html
What are my expectations? If these prints look as good as the sample I will be satisfied. I'm not expecting gallery-level stuff. However, I'm willing to bet they're better than the frankly awful (and pricey) stuff I got back from one of the major labs that process volume black and white.
Anywho - if you're like me, live in the US, and simply have a bunch of black and white scans (or color for that matter) or jpegs that you want to (but probably never will otherwise) free from their digital hard drive prison and get on paper... stuff that you wouldn't mind having prints for...
Here's a way, way cheap way to do it. Sign up for a free Winkflash account, use the coupon 50FREE.
http://www.winkflash.com/
Again - it reads like one but it's NOT an ad.
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