Kodak Express - Wonderpark (Pretoria)

[troglodiet]

Is there possibly a worse possible place to have your digital images printed than this place? I'm normally a very patient person when it comes to customer service (or lack thereof) - I'll always give a place a second, even third chance if their mistake was small, or made by a junior employee, but once I get p*ssed off, I make sure everybody knows about it.

Now I know these places aren't exactly made for the connoisseur. I know that I shouldn't expect the same quality prints from them as a decent photo lab. But one would expect them to have at least some idea of what they're doing, and they're normally good enough for the odd quick A4/jumbo print that you need immediately (especially if they're 15km closer than a decent photo lab).

My experiences so far:

1) Some time ago, wife prints one of her photos (which has been our best seller on stock sites). A day or two later she returns to the place for another print, and notices that they have her photo on their machines as an "example" of their printing. Owner apologizes profusely, saying he thought it was one of his staff member's photos.

2) I go to have a couple of photos printed. Some of them are cropped into 4/3 and square. I get my prints, which are all printed to fill the photo, which means half my of my photo is cut off. I complain, and the lady at the counter rudely explains to me that had she not done that, I would've had white stripes on the sides of my photos. I ask her what's better: having two white stripes (which are to be expected) next to your photo that you can cut off, or half your photo cut off. Still awaiting answer.

3) My flash drive does not want to open on their little quick-print machine. No problem, they'll open it on their pc and print it from there. I get called to be asked which photos I want printed. Lady opens photos in CS4, and increases the brightness by 20%. I ask her what the &$%@ she's doing, reply "Oh they looked a bit too dark to me, and any case our printer prints darker than what's displayed on the screen". Asking whether they haven't considered calibrating their screens and printers, I am greeted with a blank stare.

4) Today pushed my over the edge though. I am awaiting my business cards. No problem, I will arrange them onto an A4, get it printed and cut at the closest printing place. Two sheets of A4 will give me 24, enough to keep me going until i receive my cards. So what if they're not the best of quality, it's pretty basic (black with yellowish gold printing) , very small which makes it easier to hide flaws, so just how much can they stuff this one up?

I shouldn't have asked. I get my cards an hour later. They are not black, they are blue - Blue-Bulls blue. Cards are cut off into the letters, this despite me leaving 5mm per card for the cut (thus 10mm between two adjacent cards).

We ask about this. Oh they haven't noticed it is supposed to be black. But no problem, they will re-print it for us, just wait another hour. We tell them what they can do with their cards and future prints. Blank stare. Next customer please...


Now the owner of this place asked us some time ago if we'd be willing to enter into an agreement with him: he will promote only us as photographers in this area, on condition that we have all our photos printed at his business.

Print photos at a company that cannot distinguish between black and blue? Who cannot understand the concept of square cropped photos?
Who process one's photos according to their taste and uncalibrated computers & printers?

I have used the 1-hour lab at the Pick&Pay here, and they even produce better results than this "professional printing company".




If you inject one brain cell into that Kodak shop, that single brain cell will be one very lonely chap.

[Daryn Varney]

Troggie, it's clearly a larger problem than just a single shop.

I have been given the run around by THREE different ones here in the East Rand. I tried to use them for convenience, but will not use it again. I simply tried to get prints done to A5. Seems NO ONE is quite sure how to get this right. One tells me (after 3 hours with my photos and a contact number but never a phone call) that the images are not the right resolutions for A5... OK, so what res do i need??? "Normal A5 is fine" (note ISO A5 is 148mmx210mm). Take it to another store (not going back if they can't freaking phone me) and they are like "no sorry this is not the right size it must be 20x15" ok ok ok, cool (fuming but understanding) so off we go home. Resize all the images, which resulted in cloning etc to fit, and take it to the THIRD store. Prints are first a problem, they printed white borders on all images, so I instruct them to reprint (their cost not mine) which they do. So I had to rush out there as I was taking time off work. Get home last night and see that they have somehow cropped my 20x15 images.

Now they say the image must be 20x15, in PS it's 20x15, so how do they manage to crop these things? Right now I am beyond peed off.
Seems they lack knowledgeable staff in most of the stores. Funny thing though, there is another store that I have used before (also Kodak) and they were pretty clued up. I think Kodak is going to suffer if they keep hiring half wits

[AMILO]

The problem with the Kodak stores is it is every man for himself. Just because they all fall under the same banner does not mean that they are going to offer the same quality or service.

Daryn unfortunately at most photo labs the staff do consider an A5 to be 20x15cm. Unfortunately what they do not tell you is that they print it on a 6x8 inch setting on the machine. 6x8 inches is actually 15.24cm x 20.32cm!! This was probably why you originally got white borders. To rectify "their" mistake they simply just cropped in on your print!

Going forward remember that everything that is sized to be printed on a one hour machine should be sized in inches. The standard printing sizes which all labs should be able to offer are:

4x4
4x5
4x6
4x8
5x5
5x7
5x7.5
6x6
6x8
6x9
6x12
8x8
8x10
8x12

When choosing a Kodak lab try and find one that is using Noritsu machinery - stay away from the labs using Kiss printers. There is nothing wrong with the Kiss machines - just that no-one knows how to set them up properly.
Fuji Labs are generally better set up and the Fuji Frontier printers are about the best there are - I guess that is why they usually charge more!

Hope that helps!

[Jola]

My solution is simple - I just buy my own printers (Epson R800 & 3800).

Haven't looked back !

Can't stand the labs, even the supposedly high quality ones just produce crud !

Note : These are not really for high volumes, but if you do that then there are suitable printers.

[Luc Hosten]

I think it also depends on who is working on the machine, the local d&p shop that I frequent (also Kodak) uses photography students as staff and this works well for the owner and the clients. With this scenario the staff are immediately interested in what they do and it shows in the work they produce. What is also great is that the students gain experience in an aspect of their chosen profession and he is understanding when they have shoots. Graham is right about the sizes and I still think in imperial measurements. The student's eyes do glaze over when I mention that I want half-plate prints. A relation with the printer is important and the final solution, as Jola points out, is to do it yourself.