SWMBO and printing photos

Possibly - an Electronic Picture Frame? 

http://www.expertreviews.co.uk...e-out-of-your-photos 

I had considered that, but she's got walls covered with photos already (must be a Maltese thing).  If I did get her one she'd never learn how to use it, and muggins would have to do all the legwork.   Every so often (seems to be about twice a year) she'll decide that she wants to have a photo printed up 10 x 8  or similar, and replace one of the (many) already on shelves in frames.

Photobooks for the majority and prints of the few?

Alternatively if you want prints, then uploading to an internet site may be more convenient (at about 10p a pop).

Photobooks, not loose prints, would be my recommendation if she wants hard copies. There are many sites where you can just upload the files and they'll deliver the books in the post.

FWIW - from what you describe she really enjoys photography, perhaps if there are any local colleges, art schools or camera shops that offer a course on printing.  This may encourage your wife to pursue the single image and produce less and improved quality images.    It may not be less expensive but your time may be freed up bit to enjoy your HiFi (hobby) a bit more......

When I took a 'Scientific Photography' class in college during the 1980s the rule of thumb was plan on throwing away 2-out-of-3 prints you get back from the developer. So from a roll of 36, you might actually get 12 shots worth keeping. This was for staged, fixed shots using a lighted photo stand. Film and development costs were real considerations. Translate that to the digital age where shots cost nothing and a rule of throw away (delete) as many as 9-out-of-10 shots seems reasonable. 

That said, my wife and I look through the viewfinder differently. I tend to look at the subject(s), the background, the lighting, and the balance of the composition within the frame. If the shot is into to the sun or there's a background spoiler, I won't even bother. My wife OTOH is about capturing the emotion of the moment, focused singularly on the subject . I suppose there's something to be said about either perspective.

Capturing a great picture is a bit of a gift, I had a mate who always took a better photo than me, even when standing in the same spot.

I agree if your are into photo prints, and  are using quality photos, sure there are cheap internet photo book and equivalent printers, but the picture colour accuracy and dynamic range can be somewhat limited ... fine for snaps but if you value the print it’s worth developing a relationship with a specialist photo printer where they will manage with you the colour gamut profiles, the paper to use and even the inks.. really worth the effort in my opinion... or learn how to do quality prints yourself with the appropriate equipment.. yes a small investment required in time and money but will pay off if you plan to frame many valued pictures. Kind of like the difference between a MP3 and a hidef WAV file.

I (or should that be 'we') don't print other than a miniscule few photo's simply because of the huge number that we take.   We have a digi file system with photo's of various categories & themes;  these live in our laptops & NAS.  We select some 'best of' suitable for printing.  I photoshop, crop, edit & print & insert them into only one or two current/recent/interesting albums lying around mainly for the benefit of visitors,  these get updated as & when, when out of date they are replaced with new & the old ones don't get saved as paper, they revert to living in a NAS.      If we want a photo for framing,  i.e. on display in the house,  I send these off to a specialist who can produce at a quality standard such that I am not prepared to invest in at home.

I have also spent a lot of time scanning & cleaning up the old family photo's going back in time to the very early days of photography.  These fade, discolour & blemish & will be lost to time,  a simple scan to digital saves them.        

I have had a similar problem my other half loves printed photographs like everyone we have many 1,000’s of digital picture files and have tried with very mixed results to have some printed by Snapfish. 

We have an ok digital SLR Nikon D3200 and would love to hear of any decent quality photo printing company out there not Snapfish?

Bob the Builder posted:

I have had a similar problem my other half loves printed photographs like everyone we have many 1,000’s of digital picture files and have tried with very mixed results to have some printed by Snapfish. 

We have an ok digital SLR Nikon D3200 and would love to hear of any decent quality photo printing company out there not Snapfish?

I have used Cewe from Germany a lot. The quality is good but black and white prints often appear considerably darker than the original photo.

https://cewe-photoworld.com/about-us

Other than the number of prints are limited to the available wall space.....

She's not a serious photographer.  Her photos are usually of family (kids etc) so are often very blurred.  Her other 'thing' is to take multiple photos of the same thing even on repeat visits.  We're off to her home country in September to visit family etc, so I expect yet more photos of Valetta Harbour, Hagar Qim etc, none of which will be in any significant way different from the hundreds taken in the last 46 years.

She tends to use my Panasonic bridge camera these days, but I'm going to 'handicap' her this time by asking her to take the little Lumix compact instead (nice, with 28-200 zoom, but no optical viewfinder, alas).

She's never really got her head around any of the aperture settings etc, so I usually set her camera to what I call 'idiot mode'.  My days of 'serious' photography are long gone, and I now only take the occasional pictures of grandkids etc.  I have used an old Acorn RISCOS image processing program a some years ago to 'clean up' some very old, creased monochrome photos of her parents and grandparents, with very good results, but it was very time consuming.

And to cap it all she tries to tell me how to use a camera, when I'm the one who showed her how to use one in the first place!  Still doesn't understand the concept of fill-in flash when taking photos of family with the sun behind them.

I'm off to put them in for processing this afternoon when I go for my guitar lesson, and she said "get a large print for framing of that one showing you looking at John (grandson)".  I had to point out that it wasn't one of her photos, just one she'd seen on our son-in-law's facebook page, and that I will have to ask said him to send it to me (email/text)  so that I can print it.

I love her really, but ...  

I use photobox for the photos my wife wants printing. They are slightly too dark, slightly unersaturated and cheap, but my wife is perfectly happy with them.

Photos I want printing or anything that’s going into a frame gets printed on a Fujifilm printer. They produce top notch prints, bright, well satutated and sharp, the best I’ve come across. My local chemist (about 1 mile away), used to have a Fujifilm printer, but it was removed from store a couple of years ago. Nearest machine is 8 miles away, but worth the travel.

https://fujifilmphotoservices.co.uk/store-locator/

Tell her the printing will have to come out of the housekeeping budget !!!

Bob the Builder posted:

We have an ok digital SLR Nikon D3200 and would love to hear of any decent quality photo printing company out there not Snapfish?

I’ve used DS Colour Labs.  Decent quality value for money printing.

Simon-in-Suffolk posted:

... or learn how to do quality prints yourself with the appropriate equipment.. yes a small investment required in time and money but will pay off if you plan to frame many valued pictures. Kind of like the difference between a MP3 and a hidef WAV file.

I bought an A3 printer (Canon Pro 1) some years ago - this was a big mistake. I don't use it that much - but every year I go through two sets of cartridges (12 of them each time...). The cost? About as much as what I paid for the printer. Professional labs are cheaper - and may eventually do a better job.

Yes, if you don’t do much printing it will be probably better to use a professional specialist printer. You have the printer, inks, papers and profiling software as well as well as Spector photometer to think of.. but the results can be outstanding... in my case suitable for exhibition work.

Gazza posted:

Capturing a great picture is a bit of a gift, I had a mate who always took a better photo than me, even when standing in the same spot.

No kidding. A buddy of mine just takes travel snapshots that you would think were dead easy, but his all come out great, whereas mine are just boring.

Xenasys posted:

Tell her the printing will have to come out of the housekeeping budget !!!

Our money is all in joint accounts, so no hope there!

Took the photos into the local Boots yesterday.  Has to be Boots because SWMBO has a load of vouchers for them.

Their machines seem to have problems reading USB sticks, so I I took them in 3 forms :

USB 3 stick  formatted FAT32. All photos in root directory

USB2 stick (I managed to find one buried in a desk drawer) formatted FAT32, Photos in a subdirectory DCIM>PICTS100

DVD

So ...  the machine wouldn't even read the USB3 stick.  For the USB 2 it said there were twice as many photos as there were actually on it, DVD worked, but I was standing there for >20 minutes while it read them into its memory.   I'll collect them next week when I go in again.

I've tackled them about this problem before, including emails to their support people, but they keep telling me it's me causing the problem.  I'm very annoyed by this attitude, and have pointed out to them that a few years ago USB 2 sticks were read OK, and that I have tried every permutation of EXFAT, FAT32 etc and placing/not placing the photos in a subdirectory as above.   They suggested I just use the USB 2 sticks and pick the ones I want manually - i.e. go through only ticking every other picture.  So much for corporate help.

SWMBO is annoyed because I forgot to order a large print of one of the photos, so I think I'll just print that one off myself at home.