From: TisMeJacki@aol.com Date sent: Wed, 18 Feb 1998 14:56:10 EST To: Kimberly.Norquest@gecits.ge.com, scrapbooking1@scrapbooking.com Subject: Re: CR on film and processing I've gotten some private email about the Consumer Reports link I posted. Sorry ladies (and gents if we've got them)... I didn't realize you wouldn't be able to get to it. So here's a paste of the report.... for those that want to read what it has to say. CONSUMER REPORTS: FILM AND FILM PROCESSORS This report looks at film and film processors, and includes Ratings, details and the bottom line, recommendations and sections on which film to choose and which film processors to pick. CONSUMER REPORTS RATINGS Color Print Film The Consumer Reports Ratings list the tested BRAND/MODELs by type. Within types, they're listed in order of overall SCORE, based mostly on the color accuracy and graininess of 4 x 6-inch prints processed by the labs also rated in this report. Scores are on a scale of 0 to 100: 81 to 100 is excellent, 61 to 80 is very good, 41 to 60 is good, 21 to 40 is fair, 0 to 20 is poor. Prints were scored by a panel of trained CR staffers. Since even the best processing labs vary in performance from one order to the next, differences in score of less than about 10 points aren't very significant. To reflect those performance variations, we've included for each film a range of TYPICAL RESULTS. PRICE, except where noted, is approximate for a 24-exposure roll bought singly. Ratings: ISO 100 Films 6 tested SCORE BRAND/MODEL TYPICAL RESULTS PRICE 87 Kodak Royal Gold Excellent $4.60 85 Kodak Gold Very good to excellent 4.20 81 Fujicolor Super G Plus Very good to excellent 3.50 72 Agfacolor HDC Very good 3.70 Note: Price is based on a 27-exposure roll. 72 Konica VX Very good 2.50 61 3M Scotch Good to very good 2.00 Ratings: ISO 400 Films 3 tested SCORE BRAND/MODEL TYPICAL RESULTS PRICE 72 Fujicolor Super G Plus Very good $4.40 69 Kodak Gold Very good 5.30 63 3M Scotch Good to very good 3.35 Film Processors The Consumer Reports Ratings list the tested BRAND/MODELs by type. Within types, they're listed in order of overall SCORE, based mainly on the color and exposure accuracy of 4 x 6-inch prints, shot on all the films rated for this report, as scored by a panel of trained CR staffers. Scores are on a scale of 0 to 100: 81 to 100 is excellent, 61 to 80 is very good, 41 to 60 is good, 21 to 40 is fair, 0 to 20 is poor. If a lab is both high in quality and relatively low in price, we deem it a CR BEST BUY. Since even the best processing labs vary in performance from one order to the next, differences in score of less than 14 points aren't very significant. To reflect variations in performance, we've included for each lab a range of TYPICAL RESULTS. PRICE is approximately what we paid for processing a 24-exposure roll, one 4 x 6-inch print per frame. Ratings: Mail-Order Labs 5 tested SCORE BRAND/MODEL TYPICAL RESULTS PRICE 82 Seattle FilmWorks Very good to excellent $8.70 75 Skrudland Photo Very good to excellent 6.55 74 York Photo CR BEST BUY Very good to excellent 4.60 71 Mystic Color Very good 8.95 67 Clark Color Very good 4.45 Ratings: Minilabs 9 tested SCORE BRAND/MODEL TYPICAL RESULTS PRICE 75 Wal-Mart CR BEST BUY Very good to excellent $ 6.10 72 Ritz Camera Very good 11.30 67 Price Club Very good 5.00 67 Wolf Camera Very good 12.50 64 Motophoto Good to very good 12.40 58 CPI/Fox Good to very good 12.60 53 Qualex ExpresStop Good 7.00 52 Eckerd Express Photo Good 10.20 50 Miscellaneous labs Good 9.60 Ratings: Central Labs 4 tested SCORE BRAND/MODEL TYPICAL RESULTS PRICE 73 Kodak Services Very good $ 6.00-12.50 71 Eckerd Drugs Very good 10.20 69 Miscellaneous labs Very good 6.00 63 Konica Quality Photo Good to very good 6.00 DETAILS AND THE BOTTOM LINE Color Print Film Films are listed in order of performance of ISO 100 versions. Each "family" below consists of a number of films with the same name and different light sensitivities, reflected by their ISO numbers. Except where noted, prices are for 24 exposures (most films are also available in 12- and 36-exposure rolls and in packs of two or three rolls of various lengths). KODAK ROYAL GOLD Kodak's fanciest print film, aimed at "advanced" amateurs. The ISO 100 version ($4.60) we tested performed very well, although not significantly better than the other two top films. Also available in ISO 200 (about $5), ISO 400 ($5.65), superslow ISO 25 ($5.25) and superfast ISO 1,000 ($7.40). Bottom line: A superior performer, if pricey. KODAK GOLD The film you'll see most often in stores, the best-seller from the biggest-selling brand. Tested in ISO 100 ($4.20) and 400 ($5.30). Prints from Gold 100 are likely to look much the same as those from Royal Gold 100. But Gold 100 prints will look slightly better on average than prints from the slightly grainy Gold 400. The ISO 200 Gold ($5) should perform between its fast and slow siblings, and be hard to distinguish in average quality from either. Bottom line: A superior performer, if pricey. FUJICOLOR SUPER G PLUS A big seller from Japan's biggest film manufacturer. On average print quality, you'd be hard-pressed to discern much difference between the ISO 100 ($3.50) and 400 ($4.40) Super G Plus films we tested. Distinguishing each from its same-speed Kodak counterpart would be tougher. The ISO 200 Super G Plus ($4.30) should perform between its fast and slow siblings, and be even harder to distinguish in average quality from either. Also available in superfast ISO 800. Bottom line: A superior performer and a good value. AGFACOLOR HDC This brand is hard to find on U.S. store shelves in Agfa's own boxes, but all private-label print film labeled as made in Germany (including films from Clark, Mystic and York mail-order processing labs) is Agfacolor. Though a notch below the top-rated films in quality, the ISO 100 we tested ($3.70 per 27-exposure roll) would still provide quite acceptable results. Also available in ISO 200 ($4.20) and 400 ($4.40). Both are also 27-exposure rolls. Bottom line: A very good performer. KONICA VX Japan's "other" film manufacturer is also that nation's sole exporter of private-label film to the U.S., supplying stores including the CVS chain. In tests, the ISO 100 Konica VX ($2.50), like Agfacolor HDC 100, proved to be slightly, although not seriously, inferior to the best films we tested. Also available in ISO 200 ($3.80) and 400 ($4.60). Bottom line: A very good performer. 3M SCOTCH Any private-label print-film box labeled "Made in the U.S," including those for the Kmart (Focal), Kroger, Pathmark and Target store brands, will contain this budget film, made by 3M Corp. In our tests, prints from its ISO 100 version ($2.00) scored significantly below those from other ISO 100 films, while the ISO 400 version ($3.35) was the grainiest film we tested. Also available in ISO 200 ($2.50). bottom line: A respectable performer, but there are better choices. Film Processors Film processors are listed by type, in order of average print quality. Mail-Order Labs Turnaround time for all labs varies, order to order, between about 6 and 10 days. To receive mailers, call the phone numbers listed below. SEATTLE FILMWORKS ($8.70) Phone: 800-445-3348. A roll of Seattle's own film is automatically returned with your order, unless (as we did) you decline it, saving you $2.25 on the order. You can also receive snaps on computer disk ($4 for 24 exposures, including software) by mail or via the Internet. Postpaid mailers. Accepts credit cards. Bottom line: A superior performer, if pricey. SKRUDLAND PHOTO ($6.55) Phone: 512-444-0958. Based in Austin, Texas. Mailer requires postage (included in price above). Accepts credit cards. Bottom line: A superior performer. YORK PHOTO LABS ($4.60) Phone: 304-424-9675. You send film in postpaid mailers to one of 16 regional addresses, from where it's forwarded to the lab in West Virginia. Orders returned with preprinted labels for future mailings. Bottom line: A superior choice and an excellent value. A CR BEST BUY. MYSTIC COLOR LAB ($8.95) 800-367-6061. Based in Connecticut. Order returned with preprinted, postpaid envelopes for future mailings. Accepts credit cards. Bottom line: A very good performer, if pricey. CLARK COLOR LABS ($4.45) 301-937-5300. You send film in mailers (postage required, and included in price above) to one of 12 regional addresses, from where it's forwarded to a lab in Maryland. Orders returned with preprinted labels for future mailings. Bottom line: A very good performer, and very good value. Minilabs Turnaround time is usually an hour or so. WAL-MART ($6.10) Like some other Wal-Mart services, film processing is bargain-priced. About half of Wal-Marts have minilabs. Bottom line: A superior performer, and an excellent value. A CR BEST BUY. RITZ CAMERA ($11.30) Minilabs are in almost all the 460 Ritz Camera stores, which are located mostly in malls. Bottom line: A very good performer, if pricey. PRICE CLUB ($5.00) You need a membership (about $35 a year) to shop at these warehouse-style stores, most of which are located on the East or West Coasts and have a minilab. Some stores go by the name Costco. Bottom line: A very good performer. WOLF CAMERA AND VIDEO ($12.50) Nearly all of this chain's 180 stores are in Illinois and the Southeast, and all have minilabs. Bottom line: A very good performer, if pricey. MOTOPHOTO ($12.40) Motophoto has more than 400 minilabs nationwide and in Ontario, Canada. Bottom line: A very respectable performer, if pricey. CPI PHOTO FINISH/FOX PHOTO ($12.60) This chain's 670 stores, mostly located in shopping malls, bear the name of one company or the other. Bottom line: A very respectable performer, if pricey. QUALEX EXPRESSTOP ($7.00) ExpresStops are found in some 1400 retailers, including Walgreens and Rite Aid Drug Stores (Rite Aid calls the service Rite Express). Bottom line: An OK performer, and economical. ECKERD EXPRESS PHOTO ($10.20) A relatively expensive minilab, found in about one-quarter of the 1700 or so Eckerd Drug stores, which are located in the South, from North Carolina to Florida, and across to Texas. Bottom line: An OK performer. MISCELLANEOUS LABS ($9.60 average) Combines results from 10 "no name" minilabs, most of them stand-alone minilabs. Bottom line: OK performers. Central Labs Each serves a number of retailers, whose film envelopes may or may not identify the lab used. All central labs we tested provided prints comparable in overall quality. Turnaround time is one or two days. KODAK SERVICES ($6.00 to 12.50) The various Kodak processing services differ substantially in price but minimally in quality. Qualex provides regular service ($6) and Kodak Premium Processing ($8) to some Kmarts, some Caldors and other stores. Kodak Processing Labs ($12.50 for double prints of a 24-exposure roll) primarily service camera stores in select cities. Both companies handle Kodak mailers ($9.75, postpaid). Bottom line: Very good performers. ECKERD DRUGS ($10.20) Services the Eckerd drugstores, which are located in the South. Also accepts mail orders. Mailers to send film to the company's Clearwater, Fla., lab are available at Eckerd stores. Bottom line: A very good performer. MISCELLANEOUS LABS ($6.00 average) Combines results from various other wholesalers, excepting those that use Kodak Colorwatch. Bottom line: Very good performers. KONICA QUALITY PHOTO ($6.00) Services stores including some Kmarts and CVS stores. Offers PC Picture Show option, snaps on a computer disk ($4 for 24 exposures, including software). Bottom line: A very respectable performer. WHICH FILM TO CHOOSE? The dominant color in most retail film racks is yellow, the corporate hue of Kodak, which makes more than three-quarters of the 800 million or so rolls of film sold every year. Fuji is the distant-second brand. Smaller brands include Agfa, Konica and 3M. Agfa, Konica and 3M film may also show up disguised in stores' own boxes, since the three brands make virtually all the private-label film sold. (If the box says the film is German-made, it's Agfa. The Japanese-made film will be Konica, and the U.S.-made film is 3M.) Most of the film you'll find in stores is middling in its sensitivity to light, with a "speed" of ISO 100, 200 or 400. Each doubling of film speed, from ISO 100 to 200, halves the amount of light needed, but slightly increases graininess in photos. The very slow ISO 25 film sold at some photo stores produces very good images, but requires a camera with a versatile exposure control. At the other extreme, ISO 3,200 film allows you to easily shoot fast action in dim light without using a flash, but the prints will be noticeably grainy. And, again, you'll need a sophisticated camera. As a group, and as expected, the ISO 100 films we tested scored higher than the ISO 400 films, which were indeed grainier. But the difference wasn't dramatic on the snapshot-sized prints we had made; the best ISO 400 films were about as good overall as the lowest-rated ISO 100 films. Although we didn't test ISO 200 films, that speed is also available in all the brands we tested. Ordinarily, we would expect an ISO 200 film to score between its corresponding ISO 100 and 400 "siblings." It's best to choose film of the slowest speed that suits the light conditions (while respecting the "speed range" your camera accepts). If you're shooting in bright conditions, on a sunny day, for example, ISO 100 film is usually a good choice. By comparison, ISO 200 film will allow you to shoot a bit further into the day, or when the weather turns overcast. ISO 400 film can be invaluable when shooting outdoors in the evening or indoors without a flash. A faster film offers other advantages. Each doubling of the ISO number extends the usable range of your camera's flash by 40%, allowing you to capture subjects who are farther from the camera. Also, used in a more sophisticated camera, a higher-ISO film allows you to shoot at the faster shutter speeds that are often necessary for action shots or when a telephoto lens is used. Despite the best advance planning, you might still encounter lighting conditions that are less than ideal for the film in your camera. Often, that's no big problem. The film lab can usually correct shots that are overexposed, from using a fast film in bright sunlight, for example. Labs can also save shots that have been underexposed, though if the underexposure is too severe the prints will tend to look "flat" and "muddy." CONSUMER REPORTS RECOMMENDATIONS Color Print Film It's hard to go seriously wrong when it comes to buying print film. All brands are capable of producing satisfying snapshots. What most affects the quality of a print is how well it is printed by the processing lab. That said, three ISO 100 films we tested, Kodak Royal Gold ($4.60 for a 24-exposure roll), Kodak Gold ($4.20) and Fujicolor Super G Plus ($3.50), offer the greatest likelihood of prints whose colors are rich and accurate. Differences among them are subtle at best. Buy whichever happens to be least expensive at the store that day. If you need film in a speed higher than ISO 100, try the ISO 200 or ISO 400 versions of the Fujicolor and Kodak films. Expect to pay more, at least an additional $1 or so per roll of 24, for those or any other "faster" films you buy. And be cautious about using faster film (especially films of ISO 400 or higher) if you expect to enlarge prints beyond the 4x6-inch size you generally receive from a processor. The more images are enlarged, the more apparent is the graininess of fast film. Buying film in 36-exposure rolls makes for fewer film changes and can be more cost-effective. However, avoid letting the longer rolls languish in your camera as you await a photo opportunity. Once photographic images are exposed, they gradually degrade until they're processed. Film Processors You'd be unlikely to notice much difference in average print quality among many of the labs we tested. Just avoid the bottom-rated minilabs. They're more likely to produce worse results than any top-rated lab, regardless of its type. Our recommendation: Identify the type of photo processor that interests you (minilabs if you're in a hurry, mail-order labs if price is a priority and central labs if a store that uses one of the ones we tested (all respectable performers) is conveniently located. If you choose minilabs or mail-order processors, give first consideration to the CR BEST BUY we've picked for each. WHICH PROCESSOR TO PICK? If all photo processors produced prints of similar quality, picking a lab would be a matter of price and convenience. Unfortunately, quality, and consistency of quality, differs a lot. Any lab may occasionally make mistakes. But some labs do a good job more often than their competitors. Following is a rundown of the pros and cons of each of three lab types, and our advice on choosing a processor: Mail-order. Mailing film to a lab has its advantages. If you carry the lab's mailers with you on vacation, and send off each roll as it's finished, your prints could be waiting for you when you arrive home. Also, mail-order labs are often cheaper than processors of other types. One lab we tested, York, was consistently good and is exceptionally inexpensive, even as mail-order labs go ($4.60, including all postage, for a 24-exposure roll). We consider York a CR BEST BUY. Mail-ordering does have its inconveniences, though. When you send back disappointing prints to be reprinted (or negatives to be enlarged) it takes longer to get them back than with other types of lab. Also, there's the risk, albeit small, of your film or prints being lost in the mail. Then there is that wait, averaging 6 to 10 days, for prints to come back. No mail-order lab was significantly slower in its turnaround time than any other. All, it seems, are sometimes slower than the norm, and sometimes faster. The only reliable way to increase your odds of getting your prints back rapidly is an obvious one: If the company has several mailing addresses, send your film to the closest one. Minilabs. For sheer speed, no other processor can match the one-hour minilabs found in malls or shoehorned into other types of retail stores. But the instant gratification offered by a minilab usually costs you dearly. Also, in our tests, minilabs varied more in performance than did processors of other types. Some minilabs were merely good, while two chains, Wal-Mart and Ritz Camera, turned out prints that were on a par with the best labs of any type. Wal-Mart's prices are so low as to make its minilab processing a CR BEST BUY. Central labs. When you take film to a discount store, drugstore or camera store that has no lab of its own, it will often be developed by a large central lab. Such labs tend to be less expensive than minilabs, but they make you wait longer for service, one or two days. The envelopes used by the retailer sometimes include the lab's name. If they don't, it doesn't much matter, since our results suggest there's little to separate central labs when it comes to quality. That includes negligible differences among the various processing services offered by Kodak. Our tests suggest you're as likely to get pleasing prints if you pay $6 or so for processing by Qualex (a wholesaler owned by Kodak) as if you spend about twice as much at a camera store to have Kodak Processing Labs handle the job. Copyright Consumers Union of U.S., Inc., June 1996