Snapfish.com

My Uncle and I have recently been talking a lot about photography, and we especially tend to dig into details such as the development/printing process, lens mechanics, and extremes like astrophotography and micrography. Yesterday night he browsed to and mentioned a website as well as some of the information about it, and this website you may have already guessed is Snapfish.com. The site boasts that they are "The best value in film and digital photography." I haven't ordered anything from them yet, but here is some information about their services that might be handy if you are contemplating services such as these.

First of all, Snapfish gives you all the space you need to upload your digital photos, and they provide what I have found to be the easiest way to do it over the web. Their solution is an ActiveX application, so you have to use Internet Explorer, but it is well worth it to avoid the inability to upload more than 12 photos at a time, which still requires you to select each of the 12 photos individually... Not only will you have your digital photos online, but you can share them with friends and family. Digital photos are not the end of your online photo album though. Read on...

Snapfish offers 35mm film processing. You send in your film and for about $5 after shipping you receive one set of prints, negatives, and each of your images is scanned and added to your Snapfish account. Snapfish gives you standard prints initially, and now that they are digitally scanned, you can print them just as you can your digital photos, in various sizes.

Unfortunately you have to pay a fee to download the full-resolution images, and the images scanned in from your negatives are only 1612 x 1024 pixels. Apparently any digital photos you upload are stored in the original size you uploaded them in. To get the images, you can either download them or order a CD. The CD pricing seems a bit extreme comparatively, but to download them it costs 49 cents each for 1-10 photos, 39 cents each for 11-24, and 19 cents each for 25+ (limit of 50 files per download.) The nice thing is you probably wont need to download many pictures. Maybe after you have a few rolls stored you could find 11 you really wanted, the price would only be $4.29. If you take better pictures than me you may want all the photos, in which case you would download two rolls or 48 images at a time which would cost 9.12, cheaper than Walgreen's.

Prints are pretty affordable as well, though they are without a frame. A 4x6 is a mere 19 cents, a 5x7 ranges from 95 cents to 59 cents depending on quantity, an 8x10 is $3.79, and you can get wallet prints and family packs as well. Poster prints, which we all love, can be obtained with a high enough resolution image. Prices are $6.99 for a 11x14, $9.99 for a 12x18, $14.99 for a 16x20, and $19.99 for a 20x30. Standard shipping on each order is around $2.00 it seems like, which is reasonable for UPS ground, and you can always splurge if you get in a pinch.

I just started uploading all of my digital photos, I ordered the package kit which gives you the packaging and postage for sending your film in, and I plan on soon ordering my free 10 digital 4x6 prints and sending in a roll of film to be processed for free.