When you go to develop your pictures from a digital camera with one of those self serve machines?

Question

What is it like, what can you expect and do to be prepared to develop your own digital camera prints from your camera? From someplace that offers that like wallmart, wallgreens, or CVS etc...

Has anyone ever done this?

Answer 1

I had a client that was a professional sports franchise that gave me some slides of their athletes, to use in a special publication they asked me to design.  At the time, I had no facilities to scan slides, so I took the slides to one of those self serve kiosks to make a few prints, and to convert some to digital images.

My first piece of advice is to go when demand for the machines is low.  You don't want anyone over your shoulder, trying to rush you to get done quickly.  They are YOUR images and you want them done right.  You don't pay by the hour, so take your time.  

Be sure you bring your images in a format that is compatible with the machines.  There SHOULD be no problem with using pretty much ALl flash memory cards from digital cameras, or from CDs or DVDs.  Maybe you have a flash drive or some other portable storage device.  I haven't used one of those machines in the last year or so, but I think they still accept the 3.5 inch floppy disc.  I don't know about the old 5.25 inch floppies.  But call ahead to make sure.

Explore the controls that are available, like the brightness and contrast.  Many marginal images can be fixed at this point.

Have some idea of what you expect before you go, such as how many and what size prints you want.  Remember that you don't have to have a print of every image you took.

I was at a Wallmart store last week and noticed that their machines still required a one hour wait for prints.  I suspect it's because the prints are not inkjets, but real photographic prints. But, I can't say for sure.

Answer 2

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