Tonghang Zhou wrote: > I looked over a lady at a local Walgreen drug store, printing > some 8x10 photos on a self operated Kodak photo scan/print > machine, you know, one of those vertical yellow machines > with a touch screen on top. These machines are in > Walmart as well. > > The print quality from the print scan was surprisingly good, > and you can adjust the level of brightness and do cropping > as needed. > > The machine has ports to read floppy disk, cdrom or a digital > camera memory stick, as well as scanning prints directly. > > Wouldn't be wonderful if the machine could scan negative > and slides as well? Imagine you shoot a roll of chrome, > study them under your brilliant loupe (which would the > Pentax 5X), pick the best one and walk to your friendly > local drug store any time of the day, scan and print 8x10, > for merely 3 bucks? > > No need to buy $500 film scanner yourself, print only > the ones you like, and no need to buy a $1000 digital > camera which becomes obsolete fasters than computers. > > Wouldn't that be great for everyone? > > I'm sure Kodak could make a lot of money, AND make film > photography last a long time.
It's not very widespread, but Kodak *does* have such an operation. Here in Rochester there's a place where you can do this. It's called Picture Magician and they have several workstations where you can scan in your negative, slide or print and do basic cropping and editing. You can also, of course, download files from your digital camera, floppy disk or CD-ROM to make prints. It's all set up to be easy for the average consumer and they have knowledgable staff to help (a lot of photography students from the Rochester Institute of Technology work there part time, I think). They also have a standard minilab setup and will do prints for you if you like. They use the Kodak/Noritsu Digital Light System (same idea as the Fuji Frontier system) to print digital scans onto traditional photo paper. The quality is just outstanding. Best (non-custom) prints from slides I've seen. -- Mark Roberts www.robertstech.com - This message is from the Pentax-Discuss Mail List. To unsubscribe, go to http://www.pdml.net and follow the directions. Don't forget to visit the Pentax Users' Gallery at http://pug.komkon.org .
