FYI: Calypso Imaging Sale

[roteague]

FYI: I received the following from Calypso Imaging, and since there has been people asking about film processing, I thought I would pass this along.

"Dear clients,

Happy New Year

In celebration of our move to Santa Cruz and to kick off the new year we are offering a 15% discount from the prices listed on our web site on all services. (not including framing, mounting, laminating or workshops).

For local and visiting clients we will add an additional 10% discount during the month of January when you come into our lobby and sign our guest book.

Our new address:
256 Potrero St.
Santa Cruz, CA 95060
"

[naturephoto1]

Hi Robert,

Thanks for the sale pricing update.

Rich

[roteague]

Hi Robert,

Thanks for the sale pricing update.

Rich

No worries, I've got a load of 35mm film going to them tomorrow.

[Capocheny]

Sounds like a great time to send in some LF negatives/positives for scanning (via a Heidelberg Tango Scanner!)

Thanks for the heads-up Rob!

Cheers

[Doug Dolde]

I've really had my fill of Calypso. Poor website info and they don't communicate very well. WCI is far superior.

[roteague]

I've really had my fill of Calypso. Poor website info and they don't communicate very well. WCI is far superior.

Sorry to hear that Doug. I use both, and have been very happy with them; WCI for all my printing/scanning and Calypso for all my E6 developing.

Something that happened to me last year, with Calypso is why I am so bullish on their service. Last year, one of my credit cards got hacked, at the time I had about $300 worth of developing with Calypso, and they offered to send me the processed transparencies until such time as I could get it straightened out, and I could pay later. I was blown away by the offer, since I live in Hawaii, and they don't know me personally. Fortunately, I was able to pay with another card, but I never forgot their service.

[Howard Slavitt]

I've always found Calypso to be the best for making lightjet prints.

[Harley Goldman]

I had one print done by Calypso, a drum scan and print. Worst experience I have ever had. They sent a test print to the wrong address twice and the final print to the wrong address twice. They ignored all my changes on the test print and had to redo the final print and that was still wrong (and of course, sent it to the wrong address). To their credit, the people I spoke with were always very nice and they ended up comping the print, but it was a nightmare trying to straighten it out. They could not do anything right. Never had a problem with WCI, who I have used several times.

These days, I have my chromes developed and drum scanned locally or I scan myself on a 4990 and I print them myself on a 4800.

[David_Senesac]

Calypso's best product is print processing that is so highly controlled that an exhibitted print shown to a customer will print out given the same print file exactly the same the next day, next month, or next year. In the old days that was an enormous problem of inconsistency for photographers resulting in the need to crank out dozens of the same print during the same lab sessions in order to guarantee what the customer received was identical to what they saw. Of course that meant a large overhead up front, storage issues, and no guarantees one would ever sell them all. And even today there are probably few labs that can offer that.

Anytime one is inputting film media and having a lab do the whole work, there will be opportunity to be less than satisfied with the results despite sending guide prints. Even as a savvy Photoshop user, it takes me a few hours editing most of my big 300mb Tango scanned files to get them right while lab personnel are almost always under considerably tighter constraints to crank something out much faster. I consistently send new fully prepared print files into Calypso that never need even slight subsequent tweaking when ordering reprints. I hardly even need all the CMS tools I use because all I need to do is bring up on my monitor any of the dozens of print files I've given them because if they display similar to a new print file, the latter is certain to also print similarly. ...David

[Ted Harris]

Any lab is only as good as the individual that is running the scanner, doing the enlargement, processing the film, etc. Sometimes you will find a talented professional and sometimes just a lackluster journeyman. In our scanning workshops I spread out a range of prints done for me by a well known and respected lab; 8-9 prints done as test prints and none of them done to their satisfaction (certainly not mine). They just couldn't get it right. I took one look and asked them if each was from a different scan. They checked and said "yes." Bottom line, no one had ever taught the scanner operator how to set a white and black point. I rescanned the tranny right on the spot for them and popped out a perfect print. The lab is owned by friends so I could do that but you get the point.

When you use a lab for the first time ... to do anything .. talk with folks there and get a feelfor their strengths.