As part owner of a pro photofinishing lab until about 10 years ago, I got very spoiled on enlargements. We had a Fuji Frontier for the normal-size prints and we had a ZBE Chromira with a Kreonite processor for prints up to 40" wide by up to over 100 feet long if ever needed. We used Fuji chemicals and paper. Even our personal prints were not free since the paper and chemical costs were not insignificant. My wife actually ran the business along with 6 or so employees and they shipped all over the US. She was very particular and her motto was total satisfaction for the clients. I have boxes of prints mainly 16X20 or bigger and our walls are filled with older prints from her lab.
After she sold the lab and did only photographic work, she was always trying to find a merchant that would offer the best work and we have changed labs often. She now uses a lab that offers free shipping if the order is big enough and although the quality is okay, the problems she has had in communication with the lab have been spotty. They do redo the work if they are wrong and her biggest problem is that she does all the post-processing and tells them to not do any corrections which seems to be an iffy thing. Sometimes they do the correction and sometimes they don't.
As a huge basketball fan, I have some really nice enlargements on my walls from games I have seen. I have a huge enlargement of a fight for a rebound between players of the OKC Thunder and Chicago Bulls, and one of the miracle shot from Mario Chalmers of Kansas in the 2008 National Championship for KU against Memphis to tie the game and send it to overtime where KU won it. I must admit that it was not my shot but I was gifted a framed enlargement of the shot by the ESPN photographer that took it. My wife, Linda, is a collector of photography and she bought 20 signed and framed photos from Bert Stern before he died of his famous celebrity shots including several of his favorite model, Marilyn Monroe. If these were not up, we would have more of our own work up but I finally convinced her to display her award-winning PPA prints on the walls of our home.
I reckon I'll live through it!
