Personally, I have been amazed that more labs have not adapted to The New Reality, and found a way to stay in business. For years now, I have talked to the owner of the lab in my town, dropping little hints of things they might offer. I shot some film recently, and went to the lab, and you could hear a pin drop -- it was like a Ghost Town in there. I agree, sad. But was there no way to adapt and stay alive?
I never understood why the labs did not migrate into maybe large Epson prints, (if you didn't want a 9880 in your bedroom). Or why did they not migrate into a mild pre-press source, where you could go there and have a CMYK proof pulled? Why did they not invest in Macs and Backs, and begin to send out Digital Techs on jobs? If they made the money on "film and processing" in the old days, why not continue to make it in Digi
Some made the transition, some tried, most failed.
One in LA that is still in business made the move, but struggles, most of the rest have gone. They just couldn't adapt to the new business model Yes, the went from refremas, to G5 towers, but wanted $10 a contact sheet.
$10 doesn't work anymore when you can drop 400 jpegs in lightroom, load costco glossy stock and print 400 contact sheets on an epson 4000 for 75 cents a print
They did things the big way, not the smart way. Instead of $200 firewire drives they stuff in a closet they put in fiber optics, $15,000 color calibration devices, dedicated servers and $90,000 a year IT guys, digital trailers with a crew of three and the prices reflected that, in fact the prices were much higher than the film days.
What they didn't invest is was learning the different films (cameras). in different situations. They don't know that a Leaf shoots different than a Nikon, than a Canon, than a Phase than a Hasselblad.
If it processed in photoshop the labs could do it, as long as it was 10 or 20 images, but hand over 2,000 and say uh, you know make them kind of warm like we use to do with NC100 and they just look at you like your nuts, or estimate the job out at processed film prices.
Early on the labs, traditional and new digital, would call me and say "Mister Pookie-Siminonie Pizzadori just shot digital for Elsiethefashioncow magazine with our new Pees99digital camera and we put it into our new system we call sparrow. (The names have been changed to protect the guilty). It was fabulous and we did the whole package for $3,000 a day."
I'd say ok, what if I have 2,000 files instead of 200 like Pookie shot and they'd say 'uh, well, uh that will be tens of thousands', so I just went on my way.
But the main reason they labs are gone is they were too late They did a head in the sand, and by the time their customers had moved to digital the customer knew more about processing the images than the lab.
I don't know about most people but I can't work a Refrema, but I sure can work RD, LR, C1, LC11, DPP, CS4, NIK, etc. etc. I have drives that don't costs $4,000 and don't require an IT guy (I guess I'm the IT guy) and I can load up two epson printers and bang out prints. So can most photographers that learned digital.
The new bottom line is for
web gallery ad contact sheet processing, the Canon and Nikon cameras bang out jpegs as well as any lab. Think about that one for a moment.
And if you want to tweak them, just throw them in LR and hit clarity, move a few sliders thousand of jpegs (unlike raw files) will adjust in about 45 seconds. 3 hours of my time, or $5,000 to a lab . . . I'll spend the 3 hours.
Now processing and retouching to finish is a different animal and most of us use raw files, but honest to god, shoot a Canon 1ds3 on Raw and high jpeg, work both in photoshop with retouching and I don't know anyone that can tell the difference.
The labs were too late and no matter what anyone says, of believes, if the "larger than smaller digital sensor" camera companies don't come up with a way to make their cameras as effecient to use as a Canon or Nikon (not just in shooting, but in post production), they'll be too late also.
You can't charge twice as much and make your customer work twice as hard.
The bottom line is the labs (like photographers) didn't see the new realty coming. You can't be a one trick pony and charge 4 times what a customer can bill to their client.
B
