Digital BW, The Print

Mark, 

It's hard for me to believe a really good lab owner/operator
(yourself) thinks labs in general do a good job. 

Presumably your work is at least better-than-average (ie better than
half of the labs in the United States). 

Presumably you'd discourage dealing with worse-than-average (the lower
50%). 

Further, wouldn't you recommend dealing with the upper quartile,
avoiding all the others ?

That means avoiding 75% of all labs.

++++ In addition to "resenting" (which is understandable) I hope
you'll give us guidelines for selecting labs. 

Obviously, there are better selection methods than simply asking online...

What do you suggest? 

"Working with" a lab over time, while the lab learns its craft or the
photographer learns the lab's limits, is a longtime traditional
approach. Do you recommend that? 

I suppose if someone asked enough pros, they'd come up with useful
recommendations, if pros had time to respond to every query. Around
here, the pros seem to do their own work. 

Mark, I apologize for making you unhappy...your posts have always been
very useful. 

John / Albuquerque




--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com, Mark Savoia
<mark@...> wrote:
>
> I am a lab and resent that. Don't assume that because you have had bad  
> results, it is a global thing.
> Mark
> 
> On Dec 24, 2007, at 5:50 PM, djon43 wrote:
> 
> > If you want good work, especially from small and medium format, avoid
> > labs at all costs. Get a scanner. Do it yourself.
>