Thread: The demise of the Quality Control Sticker

Anyone still using them?

I had a student contact us to buy some, couldn't get any from the high street labs in his area.

It was quite interesting discussing with him why it was that these are an endangered species.

Another casualty of the digital age...........

You can still buy those? they bring back memories.....


I used to love putting the overexposed ones on the nudey pics of blokes back in the day

Yup, we still have some!

Hello there, i'm the student who made the enquiry

I can't think when they may have stopped using the QC stickers. Most of the students i've spoken to, roughly 20+ years old, have never experienced them, making me wonder if they fell out of favour... maybe 1999? When digital compacts started to become attainable? Maybe even before digital came in...?

Maybe it was when unsharp, out of focus, blured, over exsposed pictures began to win photo competitions in the camera mags? The labs assumed that's the way customers wanted their pictures to look.......

That is a good question, RRR.

Mostly I found people didn't like their faults pointed out to them, They never have wanted to learn but hate paying to get it done properly or fixed when it does go wrong...

Another casualty of the digital age..

Thanks for your expiriance, Pete... I have a very fuzzy recollection that at least one processors, perhaps Boots, announced that it was going to drop the stickers as it thought the same as you describe, although it could by my brain playing tricks on me? Would have been late nineties its a true recollection, pre-2000... maybe even '97? (I fell out of photography in 1999 and came back to it in 2007). Can anyone else remember this?

Indeed hzb and the sad part is, from what i can tell, no one noticed it go. I realised a few weeks ago, and wondered why even on chemical processing the sticker has vanished, and set out to find out when. It seems the sticker may have got the boot prior to digital really grabbing hold of the market.

I do remember the first and last picture i ever got a sticker on - the first had the camera strap in the picture, the last was a camera-shake ridden attempt at a macro of a mug. The former was probably 20 years ago, the latter probably 11.

Anyone still using them?