Buying a camera/maintenance

There are a few places to buy a camera in town:

  • CVS also sells 35mm and digital cameras.
  • Rite Aid sells one-shot cameras and various digital/35mm/Polaroid cameras.
  • Safeway sells one-shot cameras
  • Save Mart sells one-shot cameras
  • Thrift Stores - it's rare but you can discover some old-school Polaroid or something.

Developing Film

Developing film is rather expensive. Buying film is about $2 a roll and then developing + printing it is about $8. That's $10 for every roll of film you shoot.

  • IET Mediaworks — University affiliates only.
  • CVS — The only business that still develops film on site in Davis. It's expensive: $8.99 for 24 exposures of 35mm film. One hour photos, 3 day service, posters and more. Kodak certified technicians. Film is not developed on site; it's sent off and takes about a week to come back.
  • photosource in Sacramento
  • Rite Aid — They don't offer matte paper, only glossy. They no longer develop film on site.
  • Wal-Mart — Film is not developed on site; it's sent off and takes about a week to come back. If your negatives are already developed, you can get reprints and enlargements.

Color developing

For color film, getting "just the negatives" developed at CVS or some other similar place will probably save you money. This costs about $2 for 24 exposures. Then you can go to Hart Hall or Meyer Hall (if you're a student) and use the negative scanner to scan the negatives in. You can actually scan them in at higher quality than you could from a print! If you use a computer a lot then this will allow you to post the photos online, send around, etc. If you ever wanted to print them out you'd likely have to spend some money. Note that the photo scanners are only available for 35mm film. Meyer has the Nikon Coolscan V ED scanner. Not that megapixels actually matter, but it gives you 24 megapixels (beat that, digital SLR).

An alternative to print film is color transparency film (i.e., slides). Transparency film has more visual acuity than print film; however, with transparency film, the photographer does not have artistic freedom in the dark room. Transparency film is "what you see is what you get." Several important decisions must be factored into using transparency film. If you're a student, transparency film is expensive. The professional line of transparency films average between $5-7 per roll depending on (online) retail stores. The greatest reward from using transparency film is that when they are developed, you can view them on a light box / light table and see the vivid colors leap towards you. If you have a loupe (8x), you can even see the fine grain structure depending on the film.

Some popular professional transparencies include Fujichrome Velvia 50, 100, 100F; Fujichrome Provia 100F, 400F; Fujichrome Astia 100F; Kodak Ektachrome E100VS. All these listed films are daylight balanced, so they can be used outdoors and not worry about inaccurate color shifts. However, if you want to use these film indoors with incandecent lights, you will need a specific blue filter to correct for the color temp difference between tungsten and daylight.

You can also cross process print film on an E6 line (or vice-versa) for some bizarre color effects.

Here is some information on the print (negative) film vs. print (transparency) film. http://www.kenrockwell.com/tech/film.htm#slideorprint

Another useful site: http://www.photo.net/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=000ryD

If you're really serious about quality developing of your slide film, and are tired of driving into Sacramento every time you have a roll of film to develop, you should consider buying film-mailing envelopes. Very handy while on travel, you drop your film into these mailers, and the film is shipped to a high-quality lab, which then ships your slides back to you. Buy such mailers at [www.adorama.com Adorama] or B&H Photo-Video. A mailer costs about $5, and in the years I used them, I never had lost or damaged film.

Who runs the nearest E6 line?

B&W developing

  • Photo Quick was the only place in Davis that does B&W in-house, all other film developers send it out. That being said, Photo Quick was still pretty expensive, and went out of business in 2005?. You'd be better off shooting CN, or developing it yourself.
  • Ryerson Hall has a printing lab for residence hall students.
  • The Craft Center has a photo lab… you must go through an orientation and pay a daily or quarterly fee, but the price includes most chemicals as well as developing reels, b/w and color enlargers, drymount equipment, etc. They also sell some supplies such as paper and film.
  • The Art and Design departments both maintain their own photo labs for students within those majors.
  • The UCD Bookstore sells some supplies such as chemicals and paper.
  • Sacramento offers some high quality photo development houses.

Sending Away for Pictures: Developing Digital Camera Photos using the Internet

Great places to take pictures

Everywhere! Sometimes, when you take pictures you end up getting questioned and perhaps even confronted by people, so make sure you check out this downloadable photographers rights flier. Everyone who has a camera bag should carry a copy of this flier in their bag at all times. Undereducated and overzealous security staff, police force, and private citizens often think that our hard-won legal rights to photograph things in public should be curtailed.

In this fastest growing technology DSLR cameras has become more popular and demand for digital camera drastically decreased. It’s bit difficult to operate DLSR camera for beginners because of more buttons and options.

Sharing Pictures

Online

There is a negative scanner in the Hart Hall media lab, as well as in Meyer Hall.

DeviantArt.com - is a large community in which one can post pictures and they will be browsed and commented upon by other aspiring artists.

Flickr.com - an interesting way to view photos via slide show with easy uploading and "a community feel". Can cross-link to Flickr photos from other sites. Flickr also operates on a monthly 'upload limit' concept rather than a fixed amount of storage. For free users the monthly upload limit is 25MB worth of photos. $25 gets you a "Pro" account, which means a 2GB/month upload limit and other goodies. Be sure to check out the Davis group.

Gallery - An open-source web-based photo album software package that you can use in conjunction with a web hosting provider to host your own photos.

Imageshack - easiest and fastest way to host a pic quickly, especially if you want to use it for the wiki or a webpage. No account or membership required, although you could make one for use of the Photoblog. Just upload a pic, and keep the link it gives you, it will be hosted (supposedly) until it hasn't been viewed for 1 year.

Photobucket.com - is a common place to host pictures. Albums there by default are private so if one wants to show them to other people one must change the privacy setting in preferences. One can cross-link to Photobucket photos from other sites.

Photos.Yahoo.com - you can host as many pictures as you want (no storage limits like that of photobucket!!). However, all pictures are automatically sized down to about 480x360.

Shutterfly.com - widely recognized for providing the highest quality prints on the Internet. Shutterfly is free, reliable, and very easy to use. In addition, a paid "Pro" feature allows more serious photographers to profit from their work by setting their own pricing for prints.

Webshots.com - another large community where one can post photos for viewing and comment.

Putting photos on the wiki!

While nearly any page without a photo (or with a poor photo) is a great place for one, consider also searching for the words photo request. When someone writes this in a page it's a sign that they're specifically wanting a photograph. Also, remember our Copyrights policy. :)

Wiki-ers With Photo Stashes:

(More or less, alphabetized by last name)

Photography Clubs

Share your photos or learn more about photography by joining the currently active Photography Club at UC Davis (if you are a student) and/or the Photo Club of Davis (all community members).

Other clubs include the Davis Photography Club and the Student Photography Association, but they do not appear to have been updated in some time.

Photography Studios

Places to get your photo taken. Pets, families, high school seniors, college graduates, etc. Also see: Photographers

Photo Kiosks: Do It Yourself

Photo kiosks can be tricky. Basically, find a size that you know the photo kiosk does, make a new file that size and center your photo on the new jpeg with crop marks (if you need a border...).

Kiosk Alternatives

Photography Competitions

Best of Davis hosted by the City of Davis.

Note: Random Photo

The photo at the top of this page is randomly inserted from a group of photos listed on the RandomImages page. If you would like to add your own photo to this page, please edit that page. If you aren't sure how, please ask. Basically, this uses the RandomQuote macro which inserts here one random line from a bulleted list on another page. If you add your photo as a bullet in that list, it will show up here sometimes. Just make sure you make the sizing appropriate. Feel free, of course, to modify others if you feel they are not sized appropriately. Also, because any line of text from the bulleted list will be inserted here, you can also add thumbnails.

Comments:

You must be logged in to comment on this page. Please log in.

2005-05-01   Does anyone know of a good place in Sacramento to take your camera to have it cleaned out? My AE-1 has some dust inside of it, and it's just in need of a fix-up..Also, how much does this usually cost? —PhilipNeustrom

  • Try Pardees... I'm not a serious or even semi-serious photographer, but have picked up a couple lenses there and had some work done on an old 35mm. It was recommended to me by a real photographer. Family owned and in business for eons!
  • I agree that Pardees is great, but if you've got a nice SLR (digital or film) it is best to send it to the manufacturer, and ask for a "CLA" (Cleaning, lubrication, adjustment) and expect to pay $50-100.—BarryRice

2005-02-16 12:23:52   Addition of "Wiki-ers with Photo Stashes" was motivated by two things: (1) furthering general appreciation of photography taken by davisites, which I think is a goal we can all get on board with, and (2) I still want to replace "Kissing the War Goodbye" on this page, and if people's photos are available for our perusal it'll be easier to select the best picture. —KrisFricke

2005-02-28 19:57:06   Regarding the random photo, should we come up with some better guidelines about sizes and all? I'm not yet happy with the appearance of the one I added—layout wise. —CarlMcCabe

2005-06-19 14:10:16   Doesn't mediaworks only do stuff for the campus? I've heard that they consider doing outside jobs, but mark it up a lot? —MichaelGiardina

2005-07-28 22:19:26   How about some reviews and prices on color developing for the layman who just wants to get their pictures developed? —JackHaskel

2005-09-15 22:18:46   Anybody out there in Davis have a negative scanner I can pop by and use for a couple of hours? —AaronBurda

2005-10-07 16:29:50   Does anyone know of places around/near Davis that can fix cameras? —CathleenLu

2006-01-01 16:29:50   Just curious, but do any of these places (or other Web services) offer really quality photo printing at cheaper prices than our local conglomerate rite-aids/wallgreens etc? Are any better than the others? Nicer quality? Better deals? —MichaelGiardina

2006-05-21 12:15:45   i got some yosemite trip pictures available here, welcome to have a look of them —ZheXu

2006-05-21 12:16:00   http://www.pbase.com/jay22000066/yosemite_trip —ZheXu

2006-11-20 13:29:47   Something seems odd about this whole page...like it's nearly primarily a photograpy page, only secondarily related to Davis. And lots of material on film (some again having little to do with Davis), little on digital. Maybe the contents could be arranged so that, for instance, the detailed color developing stuff would be lowered—or even removed. I really like the random photo concept and the quality of the photos therein. —RalphFinch

2007-09-18 20:14:50   I'm a portrait photographer www.kristinekreations.com —KristineS

2008-02-10 23:06:57   I find that the negative scanners located in Meyer hall don't yield quality scans, at all. They are Epson 3170 flatbed scanners. Scans always come out grainy and oddly colored. If anyone has any tips, please share... —KNT

2008-09-26 10:06:53   Is there a way we can start a communal DavisWiki photo library for Davis "stock photos" that might be good on one of the pages someday? I know that you can just upload photos to an individual page, but it seems like so many good photos get lost that way, and it would be great to have a giant photo album of lots of Davis photos that could be used on various pages. Maybe this could work via Flickr, but I don't know since I haven't used the site. —MaryLieth

2008-10-03 17:59:05   Rite Aid no longer does any in house developing, all of it gets sent off. Also, you can't get just negatives, I tried and they sent me pics anyway that I had to pay for. I would love a place that would just give me negatives. Any suggestions? —kellycw

2008-12-10 15:56:59   It appears that the Random Photo macro will not work with any image file with a comma in its title. —Mwanner

2009-10-27 13:46:31   @kellycw I got negatives only yesterday @ the CVS in North Davis, I believe. Cost me less than two bucks each for cross processing! [: —elgrache

2010-05-13 12:58:21   I have a 35mm with a broken shutter that I'd very much like to have fixed. Are there any stores that do this kind of work IN Davis? I really want to try and stay local if possible. —ArianeBroome

  • Micro-local camera stores are definitely on the way out. I think Ritz camera was the last specialty camera store in town, but they closed last year. If you don't mind driving to Sacramento, however, Pardees Camera is a wonderful family owned business. I think they've been one of the last hold-outs when it comes to film. Might not fit your definition of local, but I think they are worth supporting. Alternatively, you can also find pretty great deals on 35mm film SLRS on Craigslist. I've seen many Davis postings for 35mm cameras below the price of that repair. You'd spend your $ in town and get yourself a working camera. I picked one up for $15 not long ago. Interested in learning photography then here is an opportunity to learn photography online at shaw academy

2013-11-21 09:43:02   Please for the love of god people STOP!!! underexposing photos.. That is all :D —GregFurstenwerth

Edit tags