Frustration at Picture Kiosks
I hardly print photos any more. Not since I went digital five years ago. But on occassion, I still want to get a few prints - they are great for sharing around a dinner table (places where my notebook can’t fit). I once had an Epson photo printer which gave awesome quality, but for about 10-50 photos a year, it’s overly expensive and the ink kept drying up between uses. For my needs, using a photo printing service was the best option.
With the proliferation of photo kiosks, I felt that a simple 15-min visit would suffice. Finding these kiosks was easy enough - every supermarket or pharmacy in the Bay Area was equipped with one. Getting a proper print was another matter.
My first visit was to a Kodak kiosk in Safeway. Plugged in my CF card, stepped through the menu items and the printing started. It looked simple enough … except that it never completed. After 15 mins, I complained, and the store assistant shrugged her shoulders, saying ‘the Kodak guy will fix this when he gets here on Tuesday’. I asked for my money back and hunted for another kiosk. As I left, I saw a sign saying ‘Print Photos in Seconds!’
I found another Kodak kiosk in Rite Aid and the clerk was very helpful. But after struggling with the printer for 15 mins, he gave up. “But it worked yesterday!” was all he could say.
In the end, I used another photo-printing kiosk at Walgreen’s - success this time! Alas, a closer look at the photos showed up a lot of grain. I printed a 4″x6″ photo from a 2-megapixel film scan. This film scan was captured from a Fuji Frontier machine, which perhaps explained that it was probably optimized for output from these machines.
I’ve had really good experience with the Fuji Frontier machines - I’ll stick with these in the future, even if they don’t offer ‘instant’ photos.