Topic: Mr Wenn - give LCE a whirl for cheap prints

[choppert]

In light of my flat Truprint photos (which took over three weeks to turn up!) I dropped four films into my local London Camera Exchange.

?4.99 for 36 matt 6"x4" in one hour  -  Truprint is ?5.69 for their "express" service.

Ok there's no Truprint 24 exposure free film but with 7dayshop's prices the 70p saving could go to some nicer film 

If you can bear to wait more than an hour the price drops to only ?3.99 a film!  That leaves ?1.70 for film - wicked!

And the prints?  Much more punchy than the Truprint ones!  Same camera, same film, same honeymoon location and same hapless photographer!

Conclusions?   LCE + 7dayshop for me going forward.  Muchos recommended 

Be good,



Chops

[Heather]

I wish I could find a local lab I trusted. One cut my negatives in half by hand because my poor Finetta 88 camera was invented before sprocket hole counting so its spacing is all over the place (nearly nothing in the beginning to about 3 times normal spacing towards the end of the roll). Another claimed they couldn't print my negatives because of the weird spacing and a 1 hour job (and pricetag) turned into an all day, come back at 5:30pm wait until 6pm for the prints whingefest from them.  Another I trusted some B&W film to before I started developing my own and their machines were dirty and my negatives had a scratch the whole length of the negative. 
There's only one place I can trust my negatives to and they're in the next town over, involving a ?1.80 bus journey. They're not very cheap either, if I remember correctly. ?5.99 for 1 hour maybe... ah but they give you some of that crappy cheap kodak stuff for free too! I have so much 35mm film as it is. I'll never shoot enough of it because I never like the pictures I take in colour anyway 

[Francois]

I know most people in Canada get their prints from the drugstore...
I tend to favor my local grocery store since the work is done on site.

[Ed Wenn]

Chops, ta for the tip. Much appreciated. I have a couple of labs I use in London if I want to get it done just right, but neither is as cheap as LCE, so it's good to know I have options.

The point about Truprint however is that I generally don't have time to go to an actual lab so the postal nature of their service is easily the most compelling reason for me to use them...the price helps too obviously, but you can't beat the 'drop off/posted back' routine - assuming their don't prevaricate like they did with Heather's films. So far all of mine have been returned within 5 working days. I'm due a delay soon though; I can just feel it.