Kodak photo printing kiosk

These Kodak printing machines have been popping up recently -- one in
my local drugstore, and another at the nearby (35 miles away) Wal-Mart
Super Center. I haven't seen anything else written about them, so I
thought I'd share my experiences.

First, where am I coming from? For a few years I've used a Canon i560
inkjet printer which was inexpensive when new and is now becoming
rather dated. I used it mainly for printing text and web pages, rarely
for prints. The few prints I ever made using generic paper and
third-party (cheap) inks seemed okay, but I wasn't looking at them
critically -- just once in a blue moon printing up a snapshot or two
for the relatives.

Recently I got my new DSLR and started thinking more seriously about
prints. I printed a 8x10 test photo using the generic ink and paper,
but I was disgusted by the poor color rendition. I then sprung for
some genuine Canon paper and inks and tried again with the same image.
The result was considerably better, but still considerably different
from what I saw on my computer monitor.

Buying a newer and better printer was an option, but realistically. . .
How many prints do I expect to make?

I decided to give the Kodak machine a test. I picked out 11 nice
photos from my library and stored them on a USB flash drive, and today
I took them back to the drug store. The kiosk has slots where you can
insert just about any kind of media: 3.5" floppy disks, CD-Rs, many
different kinds of flash cards, and USB drives. (It even has a
scanner, so you can scan prints and make new prints from them.)

My first attempt to use the machine was a failure -- it refused to read
my flash drive, even though it works perfectly on all my computers
here. I went home and copied all the images onto a SD card and then
went back to give it another try. This time it was able to read my
images, and I was in business. The touch screen interfacce is easy to
use, though a bit slow. Soon I had the machine churning out 4x6
prints. It also is able to make 5x7 and 8x10 prints, which is probably
the next thing I'll try.

I'm very happy with the results. The prints look sharp, and the colors
are much more accurate than my inkjet printer. On my reference photo
the colors are close to what I see on my monitor. Even with a
magnifying glass I can't see any problems worthy of mention, as
contrasted against the grainy texture and occasional "banding" effects
from my i560.

An important point to make is that I live in a small town which has
*never* had any kind of film processing lab. Film always had to be
shipped out for processing, then wait a week or more for prints to come
back. From a convenience standpoint, this digital kiosk puts us a huge
leap beyond where we were before.

--
Tony Belding, Hamilton Texas

Tony Belding wrote:
> The touch screen interfacce is easy to
> use, though a bit slow.

Once I was going to use one, but the person in front of me was loading
photos from a 1GB memory card, and they said that it was about 50%
through, and they had already been waiting 15 minutes or so. That was
ridiculous.

> An important point to make is that I live in a small town which has
> *never* had any kind of film processing lab. Film always had to be
> shipped out for processing, then wait a week or more for prints to come
> back. From a convenience standpoint, this digital kiosk puts us a huge
> leap beyond where we were before.

many places have automated 1 hr lab prints, where you upload the files
on the internet, and they print them in an hour. But I guess if your
small town doesn't have those, then the photo kiosk is the next best.