Introduction |
Skip the queues |
|
Kiosks aren't kiosks |
The results |
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Worth the full thousand words? |
Proof in the pictures |
The results
Table 1. Blind ranking of image quality using seven different printing methods.
| Picture | Tested | Best | Worst | |||||
| Outdoors house shot | Green saturation | 4 | 2 | 1 | 5 | 6 | 3 | 7 |
| Rollerblading happy snap | Overall balanced tonality | 4 | 2 | 5 | 7 | 6 | 3 | 1 |
| Dog on lawn | Bright sun balance | 3 | 1 | 5 | 4 | 2 | 7 | 6 |
| Australian Open crowd shot | Indoor artificial light | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 6 | 5 | 7 |
| Astronaut in space | High contrast, rich colour | 3 | 6 | 7 | 2 | 5 | 4 | 1 |
| Inflatable boat at beach | High reflection, full sun | 1 | 3 | 2 | 6 | 5 | 4 | 7 |
| Dog and girl | Shadows in portraiture | 1 | 3 | 7 | 2 | 4 | 6 | 5 |
| Beach with shelter | Sky tonality, reflective beach in full sun | 1 | 4 | 2 | 6 | 3 | 5 | 7 |
| Indoors happy snap | Flash-lit photograph, redye correction | 2 | 3 | 1 | 5 | 6 | 4 | 7 |
| Australian Open closeup shot | High zoom, artificial lighting | 3 | 1 | 2 | 6 | 7 | 4 | 5 |
| Sunset at beach | Low light, heavy colour | 5 | 4 | 1 | 2 | 7 | 3 | 6 |
Numbers correspond to the outlet at which the pictures were printed (as listed below in table 2).
See the proof in the pictures.
Table 2. Comparative ranking and pricing of photo-printing kiosks.
| # | Store | Avg. rank (lower is better) | Paper used | Cost per print / Quantity |
| 1 | Camera House | 2.81 | FujiColor Crystal Archive (matte) | AU$0.59 (1-10) AU$0.39 (11-199) AU$0.29 (200+) |
| 2 | Jade Studio | 3.00 | FujiColor Crystal Archive | AU$0.60 |
| 3 | Big W | 3.28 | Agfaphoto | AU$0.20 |
| 4 | Harvey Norman | 3.91 | FujiColor Crystal Archive | AU$0.29 |
| 5 | Kmart | 4.63 | Kodak paper (photographic) | AU$0.29 |
| 6 | Ted's | 4.90 | Kodak Royal | AU$0.59 (1-10) AU$0.49 (11-199) AU$0.39 (200-299) AU$0.29 (300+) |
| 7 | Kmart | 5.54 | Kodak Xtralife (thermal) | AU$0.59 |
Average rank for each outlet was calculated by averaging the scores given for each picture printed at that outlet. A lower score is better.
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barrie harrop
11/11/2006 08:42 PM
Try Kodak kiosk killer coming to Aust www.pxidigital.com
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Sue Taffel
25/02/2007 06:24 PM
Bravo! This is obviously a larger version of something I discovered last year. Such a shame about the Agfa machine. It was by far the best value for money and quality. Here's a curly question: all machines add brown, presumably for 'richness'. How can I compensate for this so that grey stays grey?
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tommie
14/10/2007 09:43 AM
Photo kiosks over 75,000 hits on our web site fro www.pxidigital.com sue we can fix your problem at pxi.
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Hammer11
29/10/2007 09:26 AM
You comment about inks at the end of the piece which is funny because photolabs do not print your regular 4x6 on anything except true light sensitive photographic paper. The only difference is the exposure is done by laser rather than a lamp like anologue machines used to
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stuart
16/03/2008 12:07 PM
there was no comments on what format the photos are required to be in? ie do they need to be in jpg, tiff, bmp etc?
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