%$!*%$!! at Adorama and the Post Office

[Mark Roberts]

Bill Lawlor wrote:

>I ordered some 16X20 prints from Adoramapix for the Marin County Fair 
Photo 
>Contest. Entries were due today. Two weeks ago Adorama assured me I 
would 
>have the prints in a week. A few days ago, starting to worry, I checked 
the 
>tracking number with the post office which sai they were delivered to 
my 
>house. After calls to NY and the post office I gave up. Yesterday a box 
>arrived on my porch.Hurray the Prints!. When I opened it they were 
wrecked. 
>The box was VERY flimsy and somebody had stood on the box. I am going 
back 
>to Pictopia.com for prints. More expensive, but they use mailing tubes.

I had a similar adventure about a year ago. I've given up on ordering 
prints now: I joined Pittsburgh Filmmakers, a local film/photography 
artists' group, and now I have access to Epson 24", 36" and 48" wide 
printers, so I can make my own large prints (when I need something 
larger than the 13 x 19 maximum of my Epson 2200). 

They also have film scanners; a K-M 5400 and a Nikon 9000. My Kodak RFS 
3600 recently died and now I don't have to replace it. My Scan-Multi II 
will be good enough for most purposes and I can use Filmmakers' K-M 
5400 when I need higher res. The Nikon Coolscan 9000 will be neat for 
when I want to do 4000 dpi scans of medium format slides & negs, but 
again, my old Scan Multi will get me by a lot of the time.

If you can find a similar artists' non-profit organization in your area 
it might be worth the membership fee for you.