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We are besieged by color print photofinishers--good, bad, indifferent, and variable. Currently, there are about 22,000 regular and mini photofinishing labs in the U.S., and the number is growing. Actually, the color lab you select may be the critical link in the chain that determines how well your pictures will turn out. Thus, we had every reason to test these laboratories. We included the three major types. Understandably, we had to select a representative number since 22,000 was a little too daunting even for POPULAR PHOTOGRAPHY!
What differentiates the three types of labs, and how did we pick the labs we chose to test?
1. The wholesale finisher does the developing and printing for retail outlets such as camera stores, drugstores, and supermarkets. In this category, we picked two: Fujicolor Photo Service, Inc. and Qualex, which offers Kodalux services (the former Kodak labs).
2. Mail-order photofinishers solicit business directly from consumers. As examples, we selected two big, well-known national ones, Mystic Color Labs and Clark Color Labs.
3. Minilabs are ubiquitous, springing up everywhere, primarily to handle color-print film processing and printing. Their developing/printing machines are often located right behind the counter. In this case, we selected Fromex, a 10-branch chain offering one-hour service. In addition, we tested Photolab Part III, a three-store chain specializing in 17-minute service! (When we were handed the prints by Photolab Part III, they were still warm!) What quality could such a lab produce in so short a time?
We standardized on one emulsion, Kodak Gold Ultra 400 film, for our tests. All rolls were from the same batch and stored in the same manner both before and after exposure. In POPULAR PHOTOGRAPHY'S studio, We metered and exposed our patient model to within 1/10th of an f-stop, using a Minolta Flashmeter IV, and made our exposures in a Nikon F3 HP with 105mm f/2.8 Micro-Nikkor lens. An MD-4 motor drive speeded the shooting session to help guarantee that each lab would receive identical negatives. (We shot a total of 960 nearly identical images on 36-exposure film!)
Even though our studio contains numerous flash units, we used only one flash head, whose light we bounced into an umbrella at the camera position. Why? We wanted the pictures to look as if...