Do you/how do you make hard copy pictures from your digital camera?

[Regular Guy]

OK, so I''m one week into the purchase of my Cannon 1000. If I need to replace it with the 850 tell me, but I got it for the slightly smaller size (pops into my shirt pocket, thank you), and because I believed my wife would be less likely to choke on the price.

Again, my wife knows what I believe...that hard drives fail, and if we want our pictures to enjoy, we should put then in an album. And...she actually does this (shelve them), and likes to do this for us!

We COULD print them at home. But...it''s time consuming...and god ink in our printer is also not cheap.

So, I think some sort of away service is what we want.

Based on a quick review of what pops up as offers on my Windows screen, we''ve already used Snapfish. And, they seem to be fine. I am a little confused/irritated as to whether they pictures are 9 or 12 cents, and they''ve not answered my query, but so far I''ve paid 9 cents each, and they''ve sent me my first batch. Though I''m likely to continue with them...I''m writing this note to find out what you all do.

Any other wisdom or reports from the field?

 

[jcrow]

i really like shutterfly. they run deals really often for free 4x6 prints too.
i''ve printed wedding pics/engagement pics/vaction pics with them and i''m really happy with the quality.

for simply albums, i recommend using blurb or mypublisher.

 

[strmrdr]

www.yorkphoto.com for 4x6 and occasional larger sizes.
www.mpix.com for larger amount of larger sizes.

York often runs 8c specials and occasional 5c specials when you print 50 for 4x6.
So what a lot of people do is wait for the special then print them all at one time.

 

[Regular Guy]

A few items in follow up:

1) I just got off the phone with Snapfish...they do confirm the 9 cents standard pricing...which also seems pretty good compared to the services my friends have listed above. They seem to have a nice upload service too, which I used, rather than even installing my cannon software. It mentioned something about perhaps lowering the resolution in the saving, but told me not to worry about it, for the picture making process. Unless anyone has any issues with them, they do still seem pretty good, and I think I can recommend it to others.

2) Any thoughts about the cannon 1000, still?

3) Storm, give me a bit to try your photographic techniques.

4) With the Cannon, they have the different backgrounds. I''ve used several. Does anyone think they will matter much vs keeping it on automatic?

5) My P&C is not so simple as the simple ones used to be. I guess I am just getting old.

 

[strmrdr]

which 1000? they have 2 or 3 cameras with 1000 in the model name?

 

[strmrdr]

Im going to assume its the sd1000 in that case the only downside compared to the sd850 is the lack of IS the other differences arent going too matter much.
If you do a lot of lower light shooting the IS is real nice too have.
looks like a $75 price difference.
As long as the sd1000 works for the type of shooting you do then its fine.
For someone still looking and $75 not a problem id say go with the 850is...

 

[EricaR]

If you want the photos fast try Costco. I can upload them from my computer and in less than an hour they are ready to be picked up. I think they charge $0.14 each.

 

[risingsun]

I make hard copies at home with my Sony Picture Station.

ETA: Nevermind...you said you didn't want to do that.

 

[Regular Guy]

Nice to know about Costco, especially as my wife has been going there with our disposables. You can direct the shots to your local store? Does everybody do some sort of compression when the downloading occurs, and does this matter at all? Still, Snapfish/HP is 50% off that, and they come to your door (though you pay for that, modestly). I think Betty does prefer not to have the vendor retain the equivalent of negatives.

I just checked. By weight...the SD1000 is 30% lighter. At Circuit City they''re attached to these rods, so you can''t easily compare. It''s 4.4 oz vs 5.8. That, plus beating the $200 barrier made me feel like I could come home with it. Cameras can be had at the corner store for dirt cheap...so I thought at $180 I could try to make the argument. I''ve not been thrown out for it.

 

[Regular Guy]

Date: 1/16/2008 7:03:41 PM
Author: risingsun
I make hard copies at home with my Sony Picture Station.

ETA: Nevermind...you said you didn''t want to do that.

I dunno. Betty''s done that. Do you like that? The HP printer is set up to be ready to do either.

I just checking out options. How many do you do at a time, and how long does it take?

 

[fleur-de-lis]

Ditto the costco suggestion. You can go there with either your camera, a burned cd, or memory stick and get your photos in an hour; but even more conveniently, you can sign up at costco.com, upload your photos from home, and order the prints to be made at your local store. They send you a pick-up time (typically 60-70 minutes), and you can pick them up.

Only downside is that though the photos are just pennies per print, I somehow never manage to leave Costco without being at least $100 poorer.

 

[Tacori E-ring]

I often use walmart. You can upload the photos on their website and either get them delivered to your house or pick them up.

 

[Elmorton]

I used Walgreen''s for awhile - you download a plug-in from their website and then uploading pics is a breeze. I picked ''em up in the store. The other thing I like is that they give you a time when they''ll be ready in-store. The first time I tried this was at 11 o''clock and my closest Walgreens is open 24 hours - they had them done a little before midnight. That was kinda nifty.

I typically print out my pics at home, though. I have a Canon printer that uses separate cartridges for each color and separate for color printing, and typically manage to find great deals on photo paper. I hear ya though about being worried about losing files, though -I''m a photo freeeeeeeeeak, so we just bought an external hard drive. I literally filled up all the space on my 3 year old ibook with my 6,000 pics and music/movies. I definitely recommend the external drive for a back-up.

For our honeymoon/wedding candids, I went to Target and used the Kodak machine (just slipped my SD card into the slot, had a couple extras on a jump drive). It took fooooooorever to select each photo for printing, but the quality of the pics was GORGEOUS. Kodak has an option where you can bump up the color quality which I did - the Bajan sunsets and caribbean scenery looked absolutely divine - but I think they were .12 per photo.

I''m pretty sure Shutterfly has a partnership with Target (they used to send me a bazillion e-mails). One of my friends made her wedding album with Shutterfly and it looks EXCELLENT and came within a week. I would definitely recommend them for album projects.

 

[somethingshiny]

Re: Printing at Home

The good ink for my good printer makes printing very expensive. So, I got the Epson Picture Mate. It fits just about any digital camera card. I buy the print pack which includes 100 4x6 pics and the ink cartridge for $25 at Staples.

 

[mrssalvo]

i upload to www.snapfish.com. it''s like shutterfly. I''ve also burned them to a disc and taken them to costco or target and print them out at kodak kiosk. costco is the cheapest though.

 

[baby monster]

I've been a Snapfish customer since 2001 - never had a problem with them and the pictures always come out great. I started with mailing 35mm rolls and then moved to digital. They still offer film processing. I like that the prints are delivered to the house and I don't have to go pick them up. However, Snapfish now offers store pick-up at Walgreens. I used it for the first time for Christmas cards because I wanted the cards very fast and it worked pretty well. I uploaded pictures to Snapfish, selected the layout for cards, paid and selected store for pickup. They sent an email to me when the order was ready for pickup.

 

[curlygirl]

I use Kodak Easyshare (used to be Ofoto). I also have used Shutterfly and Snapfish. All the prints look pretty decent. With Kodak, you can actually upload them and then rather than having them mailed to you, you can go and pick them up at a participating Walgreen's near you...

 

[marcy]

We have an Epson Photo Mate printer (it only prints 4 x 6 inch prints) and we sure like the photos we get from it.

 

[monarch64]

I have always been pleased with shutterfly''s quality and service (using std. shipping I get the prints in a day or two). Snapfish isn''t bad either. I really like the online services...I''d rather play around with backgrounds/frames/editing online than do it standing at a kiosk in Walgreens or similar. I don''t mind printing hard copies at home every once in a while, but I reserve that for when I need pics fast for family GTG''s or something. However, I can''t make really large hard copies at home, so that''s another case where the online services come in really handy.

Also, although we have a great digicam and digicamcorder (is that what they''re called? IdK), I try to always bring along a disposable camera on vacations or times when I know DH and I will want to take lots of pictures. That way we get a good mix of pics between the three, and I can have the snapshots from the disposable in a hour if I want.