Photography tips

Today I headed down to my preferred local photo kiosk only to get a very rude shock when it came to pricing. Let me take a look at a few things before I get to specifices as to why I was shocked!

I usually only print photos at 6x8 or larger and quite a while ago I took a few prepared photos to all of the local places and got prints to compare the quality and service.  I found 2 places (out of about 6 or 7 that I tested) that I was both happy with the price, convenience and service.  Ok, I really found 3, but the 3rd place is the pro lab that I trust my larger prints to (and only use when I have a large quantity of smaller prints to do).

For the sake of convenience lets just give these places a name - lets call the first kiosk bunny photos, the second one Hardly Normal and the Pro lab - well they are the best place in Adelaide for your prints - Atkins.

The Retail Giant, Hardly Normal, is convenient to my work and I often drop in at lunch time to get prints.  They charge a reasonable $0.99 for my 6x8 prints.  The service is pretty good and I usually get prints within 30 minutes, or if they will be longer, I pick them up on the way home from work.

The Kiosk, Bunny photos used to have a reasonable rate of about $6 for non Gold club members and $1.99 for Gold club members.  The service has been pretty good and prints were usually done well within 1 hour.  Yes, they are very convenient to where I live and I used them often.  Until today, they were a place that I would spend $300-600 a year at.

Well, the Sticker shock hit me today and The bunny will not be getting very much of my $ anymore.

When I went in today, I found that they have jacked up their prices by a massive 300%! Yes, that is a 300% price increase!

They simply got too greedy - they went from a wonderful 1 hour service for digital prints to a 3 tiered pricing model and decided to really treat their long-term loyal customers with contempt by doing so.   Now, for a 1 hour Service I have to pay a massive $5.99, 24 hour service is $3.99 and for a 48 hour service (yes, 2 days) it is still the $1.99 per print.  While the 2 day service is stilla reasonable price it is certainly no longer convenient.

Suddenly, they have gone from a convenient and cost effective 1 hour service into a money grabbing ripoff to privide what you used to get.

So, today, I did not get the 4 photos I wanted prints for done - it would have cost me a massive $23.96 for me to have them done.  Instead, I hopped in my car and drove about 15km to that Hardly Normal place and paid $3.96 instead.  Yes, it was a little less convenient, but a whole lot cheaper.

As an aside, the Pro lab that I use does not even charge this much! Yes, their prices for small prints are a bit dearer and they have a 2-3 day turnaround but the quality of the print is consistent and top quality.  Whenever this is important to me I don't even consider one of the 1 hour labs.

I use the 1 hour labs as a way of doing proffs of photos that I am considering printing out larger (at the pro lab of course) as I like to quickly get an idea as to how good a print might look.