If you've been to a mall lately you've probably seen a Ritz Camera shop or one of their affiliates - Kitts or Wolfe among others. It turns out that recently they've had to file for bankruptcy. In our current economic situation you'd think that this is a normal activity for a struggling business, but it turns out that the reason behind it actually has to do with the transition to digital photography. Ritz made their money printing pictures - many of which sucked and were promptly thrown out, but now people only print the one or two (if any) of the pictures they want. Most of my best pictures go up on Flickr and if they get printed it's usually in a book I order from Blurb. It seems that despite photography being at an all time high, making prints is no longer profitable - that's good for something, just not Ritz.
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
The other problem with Ritz Camera is that - at least the ones I patronized - the photo developing was awful. The quality was low, the graininess was high, and the colors were often washed out. I always got better results from Wal-Mart, Target, and especially CVS.
Ritz sold themselves as high-end, but returned sub-par results.
All of their products are sort of the base line of what you would want - unless it is a big name brand (e.g. Canon, Nikon etc.). Don't buy their quantaray lenses - they're a huge waste of money.
Post a Comment