Camera Store - The Hell of Retail

8x6 dilemma

Speaking of low-demand items…

Here’s something interesting: the camera store where I work, which also does photo-finishing (developing and processing and printing photographs), offers many sizes for prints, one of which is six inches by eight inches. This is an unusually wide aspect ratio (a 4x6 print is one and a half times as long as it is wide, unlike an 8x6 which is only one and a THIRD as long). Well, unusual until you realize that one-by-one-and-a-third is the aspect ratio of almost all pictures captured by digital cameras. In other words, digital pictures are more square-ish, or “fatter”, while film pictures are more rectangular-ish, or “thinner”. But digital pictures can also be made into 4x6s, and film pictures can also be printed as 8x6s, albeit with cropping and/or stretching to make the picture fit.

In any case, I never really thought the 8x6 size was unusual. It’s the same price as the 5x7 but a little bigger, so a lot of our customers get it. We have no shortage of 8x6 frames, and quite a few 8x6-friendly albums. It’s quite a bit cheaper than the next size up, and with an employee discount it is cheap indeed, so when I take a picture I think is nice, I usually get an 8x6 of it. As I only take digital pictures, I don’t even have to worry about cropping – the image fits into the print perfectly every time.

I just spent a week on the opposite coast from where I live, as my parents live across the US from me. I wanted to get some 8x6s organized into albums and frames to give as gifts for my family when I came to visit my home country. However, while getting the prints made was no problem, finding 8x6 albums and frames was difficult. I got the prints made at a store of the same chain as the one I work for, and they did not have any albums or frames for that size. I asked about this, and they said “Yeah, we don’t really have a lot of 8x6 stuff”. Gee, thanks. I tried three other photo shops, NOT of the same chain, and they all told me “it’s just not a common format”, “it’s very low-demand”, “no-one does 8x6”. Well, I do! And anyone with a digital camera should too. No good reason not to (you get less cropping and more picture for the same price), except that half the country seems to think it’s a weird size.

I went back to the store where I got the prints, near my parent’s place, and asked them what was up with the lack of 8x6 stuff. “In the store where I work, in the [opposite] coast, we have tons of it”. “Well, you know, I think it’s a size WE made up”, the associate told me.

Hmmm. I wonder if he’s right. That’s really interesting. How odd that a chain of photo shops – a very large one with stores in 48 states, but just a chain of stores nonetheless – could have that much influence on the world of photography. It’s possible. I mean, manufacturers of frames and albums do make 8x6 products, and even in my home country (where I’m writing this right now) I do not have trouble finding 8x6 stuff. Imagine, a size invented by an American store for people with digital cameras, determining what gets designed and made and sold all the way in other continents!

Never underestimate the power of a large retail chain.

PS: Traveling away from the big city where my parents live, to the small town not too far away where my sister goes to school, I stopped at another store of the chain I work for, and did find a precious few 8x6 albums and frames – JUST enough for the Christmas gifts I was planning on, just in time for my trip to my home country.

PPS: Yes, I could have printed those pictures (for the gifts) as 5x7s once I figured out how hard it was to fund 8x6 stuff… but that would mean they would have to crop my pictures! NEVER!

posted by Remus