I get the impression Mixi does enough photography to have a feel for the
subject...........

The only reason for doing prints at home would be if you have a film
scanner and want some short life prints from slides. Commercial labs
that will print from slides are getting harder to find. I am not sure
that you would find one in the US between Denver and Phoenix nowadays.
Even commercial prints from film will have a longevity problem if you
are talking color film and prints. The best for longevity is color
positive film (think Kodachrome 25 here). Of course if you really want
longevity you have to go with black and white film. Come to think of it
though, I am not sure how the longevity of BOW positive film compares to
BOW negative film.

To keep our orientation to r.t.e. I should point out that back when I
took Roman archeology in college, probably half the lecture time
consisted of BOW lantern slides from the University's collection that
were taken on site in the mid to late 1800's. The oldest slides in that
collection would now be well over 100 years old. AFAIR there were also
a few color lantern slides taken just after WWII showing damage to some
of the monuments. Even today I consider the beauty and sharpness of
those color lantern slides as truly matchless.

And therein is the problem with digital - no slides for slideshows.
--
wf.

Jeremy Henderson wrote:



Whoa! Mixi in "Talking sense" Shock Horror!

In fact I am mystied by the idea of printing your photos at home - you
have to buy a printer, mess with inks, buy special paper in a variety
of sizes, experiment with setting up the parameters, and wait for the
thing to print out. Then you have a print that will probably fade
rapidly in sunlight.

The alternative is to upload your photos to a photo service and next
day pick up your gleaming prints from their store (I recommend Photo
Service in Frogland - which I tried out at Mixi's suggestion).
Infinitely better idea.