Can anyone recommend a good place in the DC area to enlarge/ make prints from slides? What is the best way to do it? I've tried having my slides scanned and then printed at Penn Camera but I wasn't very pleased with the results. To have a single slide printed on a 11X14 film will cost $30. Is there a cheaper place/way to get good enlarments? Thanks...

-- Felipe (fba5@yahoo.com), December 12, 2001

Answers

I tried Chrome in Washington, DC, which has a good reputation as a pro lab. Expensive!! Staff brusque. Never went back.

You might try National Geographic, which (I read on Photo.net some years ago) has a film lab open to the public. I don't know about prices, or whether they do slide-to-11x14 prints.

My solution was mail order. I like two places: MysticColorLab.com, a mass-market lab with excellent quality control; and AandI.com, a pro lab with much lower prices than Chrome, and helpful staff that can be contacted via phone or e-mail. A and I have mailers for prepaid negative and slide processing at an attractive price, sold by themselves in 5-packs, and by B&H (bhphoto.com) in any quantity you want.

Mail order service has problems. As you doubtless have noticed, mail service to the DC area has been very slow since the anthrax killings. If the US Postal Service starts irradiating mail as a precaution, undeveloped film sent through the mail will be destroyed.

-- Michael Lopez (mlopez@ers.usda.gov), December 19, 2001.

The National Geographic photo services web site is at: http://www.nationalgeographic.com/labs/index.html

-- Michael Lopez (mlopez@ers.usda.gov), December 19, 2001.