120 Lab in London (Not crazy priced?)

[anthony_wallace]

Hi there,

 

I'm pretty new to 120 film and am finding it very expensive to get it processed in London. Can anyone

recommend a lab that doesn't charge crazy prices please? I used to work in a camera shop and it used to

be much cheaper and still good quality!!

 

Loving the format but not wanting to go back to digital... Please help!

[kaveh_ranjbar]

What is your film? Black and white? E6 Slides? C41 Negatives?

[dickhilker]

I'd also be interested in a good, but reasonable printing lab in London for high-end work. A friend there is being quoted 10X what I charge in the Boston area. Of course, part of that is the exchange rate, but it's still 5X at par.

[colin turner]

http://www.metroimaging.co.uk/news/newsitem.asp?news_id=16

 

http://www.genesis-digital.net/pages/fs_service.html

[david_henderson]

I use these people.

 

www.bayeux.co.uk

 

Their pricing is on the web-site. I don't know what you call crazy. They make prints too, and have a LightJet.

 

The one word of advice I'd give when dealing with a pro lab is not to just walk in off the street every few months. Thats a recipe to pay their full (list) prices. Open an account and go there reasonably often- and in all probability you'll get a decent discount rate affixed to your account.

[dickhilker]

I guess their prices aren't crazy -- especially since it appears that's what they can get, but giclee prints on any top-quality paper, printed on an Epson pigment ink printer are currently being shipped from here to a client in London for much, much less: for instance, three 24 X 20 prints recently were billed at 20 quid each, including shipping costs.

[david_henderson]

Dick. Take care not to draw the wrong conclusions. The price of lab prints here (and I imagine in the USA also)varies enormously. It is perfectly possible to get a 24" x 20" print from film or digital in the UK for less than ?20. Whether they will be as good as those you offer I can't say. Factors like the degree of manual intervention and quality control; the skill set/cost of those handling the job; what they're printing with and printing on; where the lab needs to be to service its clients; whether they generate all business remotely or need to sustain a "front of house" operation and so on, all reflect in prices and there is a substantial price difference between the top of the market and the bulk/value end.

 

I imagine that there is more difference between one lab and the next in either UK or USA than there is between the countries. That said it is increasingly a global market and indeed I have sourced most of my colour prints from the USA for several years. This isn't because I save money by doing so- though at $2 to the GBP I nmight well be- but because of the quality of what I get and the consistency of that quality.

[dickhilker]

Thanks, David: my observation was based on the only three labs I could find, all probably with high overhead from their locations, front-end expenses and the other factors you mentioned. The exchange rate's a big factor, of course, even with the fairly high shipping costs for small orders. And, perhaps even more fairly, my overhead's very low since I'm retired and working at home.

 

I wonder why the UK labs can't deliver the consistent quality you need, even at their somewhat elevated price levels and the apparent sophistication of their facilities.

[david_henderson]

Dick

 

"I wonder why the UK labs can't deliver the consistent quality you need"

 

Maybe there are those that can, and I have to admit that Fedex costs and duty inhibits the number of prints I buy. But I started dealing with WCI in California years ago, when the London labs were trying to sell me R types and expensive Cibas and prints made from internegs. All of which I found unsatisfactory. I found WCI when Rich Seiling responded to a post I contributed to here on Photo.net and gave their LightJet service a try. I was mightily impressed and I still view them as my best print lab. These days there are a lot of labs in the UK set up with LightJets and Lambdas - and truth to tell some of them would probably meet my needs pretty well. But none of them have successfully made many hundreds of digital prints for me, have profiles that I know work well with my calibrated screen, and most of them are more expensive than WCI so long as I'm not stupid enough to order from the US one at a time. Naturally if I'm in a real hurry I'll use a London source, but otherwise its as easy for me to post a CD to CA as to somewhere in the UK.