P3D Re: PHOTO-3D digest 3581

[Ronald Beck <ronald-beck@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Certainly all these costs should be considered when deciding whether to
"go digital" or stay with film.  For me, the ability to massage the
image prior to making your print(s) also factors in.  And the ability to
work on it at any time rather than depending on the photo department's
hours is a big plus.

You should also take into account the price of reprints, which if done
at a later date is usually more expensive.  Consider too the Kodak
scanning kiosks at most one-hour places which allow you to scan a photo
and make prints.  Most of these are $7.00 per sheet.  Of course, again,
you control the format and other factors.

Besides, my wife never provides me with a complete list of what photos
we need for who (grandparents, aunts & uncles, friends, etc...).  So
it's worth it for me to be able to print photos at my leisure at home.

Regards,
Ron

> However, the CMY print cartridge costs around $35.  I'm not sure yet how
> many pages that will yield, but even if it's good for 50 (which is
> probably optimistic), that's already $.70 per page just for ink.  The
> heavyweight photo paper, which is required for the photo-quality
> results, runs around $1.00 per page.  So that's two prints for around
> $1.70, or around $.85 per print.  Compare that to around $26 for film,
> developing and double-prints of a 35mm, 36-exposure roll.  That's 72
> prints at around $.37 each, less than half the cost per print.  Of
> course this doesn't include the cost of the printer, which by rights
> should also be factored in.  We'll call the cost of the film and digital
> cameras a wash.  Then there's the cost of that computer...