Photos from Film in Charlottetown

We have five rolls of film from our trip to Europe (we didn’t take the digital camera because we didn’t want to have to worry about getting photos out of it; turned out that EasyInternetCafe machines have USB ports you can use for this purpose). We want the photos developed and scanned so that we can use them as digital files.

PEI Photo Lab on Queen Street will develop and burn a CD-ROM of the photos, but you have to get prints made at the same time. CD-ROM costs $7 and developing costs $12, so it’s $19 a roll.

Wal-Mart will develop and burn a CD-ROM, again with prints required, for $9.97 for the prints and $4.97 for the CD-ROM, so it’s $15 a roll. But, to quote their clerk, “our APS machine is down today, but it should be up tomorrow.” Doesn’t bode well. Amazingly, they can return the prints and the CD-ROM in one hour (when things are working).

Zellers doesn’t do the CD-ROM burning in-house, but can send film away for this. Their cost for a CD-ROM — which took them a couple of minutes to look up — is $8.99 and they were unclear on the costs for developing and printing (which is, as with others above, required); they thought it was probably $7.00. So the price a Zellers is, maybe, $16 a roll.

Japan Camera in the Charlottetown Mall doesn’t do any digital work (though they do have a digital printer in the store, allowing you to make prints from digital files). Their prices for developing APS film are $13.99/roll for 1 hour service and $9.99/roll for 3-day turnaround.

Shoppers Drug Mart (three locations: Kent Street, University Avenue, Charlottetown Mall) will develop film for $7.99/roll until tomorrow night (on sale) and $9.99/roll after that. They’ll burn a CD-ROM for $7.99/roll. Film is sent away to Moncton for developing and burning and turnaround time is 4 to 6 days. Total cost, assuming the sale price, is $16 per roll.

Just by way of comparison, I checked the prices off-Island.

At Duncan & Wright in Waterdown, Ontario, which is where my mother gets her prints and files. They will develop without prints for $10/roll for the first roll and $5/roll for the second and subsequent rolls. It takes them “about a week.”

At Carsand-Mosher in Halifax for “standard” resolution scanning they charge $20/roll and for “low” resolution it’s $10/roll. Their developing costs (which appear to be required in addition) are $19.55/roll, making the combined cost for prints and files $40/roll. I hope they do a good job.

So, in the end, if we want to stay on-Island and get quick service, the best deal is Wal-Mart, where five rolls will take an hour and cost us $75. If we send my mother the film, and have her people do it, it will be $30 and take us a couple of weeks.

Next time, we take the digital camera!

Comments

Alan's picture
Alan on May 22, 2003 - 19:45 Permalink

Did you try Atlantic Photo Supply? They were always my choice in Halifax. They have a horrible jube-jube barf site and a PDF in a frame for a price list so beware.

Dave Hyndman's picture
Dave Hyndman on May 22, 2003 - 20:52 Permalink

Peter:

I’ve only seen scans from one company offering this type of service (Japan Photo in Ontario, I believe). Resolution was reasonable at 1767x1161 … approcahing 3 megapixels and the file size for each of the JPEGs was approaching 1MB. However, the quality was terrible: very soft and a lot of colour washed out. My description doesn’t sufficiently describe how bad they were.

Let us know how you make out. I’d like to know if this problem is with this service generally or only with this particular developer.

Thanks.

Isaac's picture
Isaac on May 23, 2003 - 16:35 Permalink

I’m curious, did any or all of the companies you go to list the scanned resolutions of the images on the cd?

Peter Rukavina's picture
Peter Rukavina on May 26, 2003 - 03:54 Permalink

Update: we took a sample roll to Wal-Mart, and tested the Kodak Picture-CD in the store on pick-up and everything looked okay. When we got the CD home, though, and took a look on my home machine, we found that all of the scans had a band of bright distortion running the length of the photo. Back to Wal-Mart tomorrow to see what they can do about this.