I’m continuing testing labs for outsourcing. Latest is BWC Labs at www.BWC.net
I came across them when I was looking to see what labs were used by [let's just say a site that is well-respected for hosting and printing]. I installed ROES and have ordered prints on four different flavors of FUJI Archival Crystal Paper: Archival Flex, Luster, Pearl, and Silk. I’ve seen the paper in galleries and have been impressed, though all the images I saw were color.
BWC has an extensive offering of papers, and in case you’ve never used ROES software for uploading and managing your workflow – every version is different because the catalog is setup by the company, i.e. in this case BWC.
For orders over $32 ordered through ROES there’s no charge for Fedex Ground. There is always a packaging charge of $2.50. It’s a huge operation offering everything under the sun. True, they don’t offer b&w fiber prints with Ilford chemistry – I think that remains a specialty of SilverDigitalImaging – but that will be something I would use for special offers.
So, I have ordered a bunch of prints from BWC, both B&W (there is an option for telling them this is a b&w print) and color. They offer topcoats (sprays) of various thicknesses for the paper, and a world of mounting options.
I will continue to search for this holy grail of price / quality so that I can spend my time doing more creative work and yet keeping customers happy with pricing, turnaround time, and print quality.
4 Responses to “BWC PHOTO LAB”
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Maybe I don’t understand, but how much of a savings in time and cost will you have by outsourcing? Is it really that much better than doing it yourself? You’re already invested a big pro printer and I assume the images you have for sale (or at least the most popular ones) are already optimized and ready for printing, and you will have to examine and pack the prints yourself anyway, right? So why don’t you just set aside x-amount of hours/day to print, and set aside specific blocks of time for shooting?
A. You don’t understand. There is a difference in time of perhaps 10 to 1. No kidding. So, unless you’ve been printing large format inkjets on fine art paper for perhaps one customer who ordered 20 prints and you are paying for cleaning the thing with ink and paper costs more than photographic paper and so many things go wrong — and this is after perhaps 10 years of inkjet printing — you just don’t get it.
If you are outsourcing prints, your prints are loaded and stored on the server, you say what size, hit a button, done – next one. You could easily do say 30 different prints in half a day. They have to worry about the printing process not you. So that’s the truth. My turnaround for prints has been three or four weeks. With prints outsourced it shouldn’t take more than one week – two at most. It is a very big deal.
Another way to see what I’m talking about is to check out fine art inkjet pricing at say West Coast Imaging or any excellent lab, and compare the prices for high-end inkjet printing with prints that are done with a DURST Theta process or any chromogenic process. Look at the turnaround time. You’ll find that essentially my prices are similar to their prices and all they are doing is printing; I’m printing my own work!
If I were to outsource my prints to be done on the same equipment I’m using, I would need to raise my prices by at least 50%. If I can do them with silver halide type process, I could actually lower my print prices. It’s all about the reliability of the two processes, time and cost.
I guess I don’t understand. 20 prints for one customer is quite an outlier statistically I’d assume, considering your recent posts about bills. If you get lots of orders for 30 prints at a clip I’d think your cash flow would be pretty darn good. Whatever. Assuming you get orders for one or two prints at a time you could print, pack and ship quickly as opposed to ordering for someone else to print for you, ship to you, then for you to pack and ship (assuming there are no problems with the print, at which point the clock resets as you deal with reprints). I guess you’re right that I don’t understand it, but you’re not explaining it beyond the issue of inkjet problems.
I’ve done my best to explain it. Someday, maybe you’ll be able to walk a few years in my shoes, and it will all become clear. Until then – I’ll just let this thread go. Also – since you sign in as “A” – I don’t feel that comfortable continuing the chat. If you don’t want to have your email or name made public, you can email me offline to continue. I really do need to know something about the other persons experience in order to evaluate what they say.