Do not go to Jonas Photo!

Today we plan to do Soemardjan family photo. Having asked around, Yodhi found out that family photo package around Jakarta is very expensive, between three million rupiah or more expensive. It's quite ridiculously priced. So when Yodhi found out that Jonas Photo only charged about one hundred and fifty thousand rupiah, we decided to go there. Besides, I knew Jonas Photo is quite reputable in Bandung too.

We went to Jonas Photo at Arteri PI. There is a long line of other families waiting to take photos too. So instead of waiting in Jonas waiting room, we decided to go to Dunkin Donut and have breakfast. Indi brought our digital camera to capture the special family gathering moments, and hoping to be able to take the studio photographs using his own camera too. So here are some photos we took in Dunkin Donuts. This is Neo and Noe played together while Indi took photo of them through mirror reflection at Dunkin Donuts.

This is Noe kissed by Neo

After having brunch in Dunkin Donut for three hours, we walked back to Jonas Photo. What a surprise to find out that they haven't finished taking photo of the other group! So we waited again for another one hour there.

When our turn arrived, we saw the sign that we're not allowed to take photo using our own camera. Alright, we complied to that..

We requested for digital copy because it would be faster to process. Funnily enough, digital copy costs more than the print out, whereas in fact there will be less thing to do compared to print negatives. But we didn't complain yet.

We started to get irrtated when each time we request things, they always say that it cannot be done. Indi and Yodhi, both really know photography, so they requested to modify the lighting locations to create different effects. Jonas staff said, it can't be done because it's not the standard lighting. They have the lighting equipment, but they just didn't want to move it around. When Indi requested the staff to take the photo from lower angle, the staff at first said that it can't be done. But after Indi argued with her, she finally complied. When Indi requested for fill-in flash, again she said that it can't be done because it's not standard request.

The funny thing is that the staff did not take any light measurement. It seems that all she does is just push the camera trigger.

So after tiring argument, we finally have our photos done. We went back to the waiting room.

We were surprised to see that the photo resulted in ugly quality with grey backdrop (rather than white) and revealing the surrounding of the studio (equipment and stuff). But the staff assured us that the digital copy would be edited to crop and adjust the quality. OK, we tried to believe that....

But then we were surprised that we were asked to choose only one digital copies of around twenty takes that she did. We understood that we would only get one hard copy of the photos, but we expected to get CD-ROM of all the takes. We argued with them that we wanted to have digital copy all the takes, but they simply refused to do it. While they refused, they couldn't answer why they can't do it. We really did not understand, what so difficult with it?

We were also surprised that the format of the photos are small lowest resolution JPEG, rather than RAW images. Paying for digital copies, surely at least we deserve RAW images!

At that point we were quite angry that we asked to talk to their manager. Without remorse, they said that we can just write to the manager or even newspaper, but they wouldn't accommodate non-standard request such as ours.

And when the hard copy finally came, the photos wasn't cropped nor edited as promised.

We don't have anymore words to argue against their stubborness, so we went home disappointed, five hours of the day has gone to waste.

But what more can you expect? You pay peanuts, you get monkey service.

We should've just rented out a studio and do everything ourselves.

When we got home, Indi started to have fever, so I cancelled the plan to go to Mas Dian's new restaurant Trattoria. Over night, his fever got really bad and really high, close to 40 celcius. Indi went to doctor but not yet hospitalised, unless his fever do not go down the next day. We were all really anxious.