DONPREY on tue 13 jan 98
Before I discovered clay, photography was my passion...... Idid it when I was
a kid, did it as a Navy photographer and worked for Kodak for 25 years. A lot
of those 25 years were spent as a quality control engineer for photo
processing equipment manufacturing. Based on that experience, here is what I
think:
A quality print or transparency depends upon three things, quality in the
camera, quality in the film and quality in the processing/printing. There are
lots of good quality cameras on the market; Kodak and Fuji make high quality
sensitized goods, and there is high quality processing to be found. But I
think processing is the hardest for the consumer to get a handle on....it is
sort of the hidden component. But, here price is a pretty good indicator (you
get what you pay for). It costs money for a lab to maintain a 1, 2 or 3
person quality control staff. That is factor number one. Number two is the
fact that this is not a high paying industry and they can have a high turnover
rate down at the worker level where it really counts . Moral: don't skimp on
the processing money you spend for photos of any real importance to you.
Don Prey in Oregon
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