Amsterdam - Photography

Last Updated: August 10, 1999

I took a lot of pictures while in Amsterdam. Many were to document my experience there, but there's lots to take photos of. This page describes what are hopefully useful notes for your visit.

Photo-ops

Here are a few places (and times) for getting some nice shots. Note that they're near the area I lived in.

Westerkerke from the NW at 8PM in May. The light hits it from a good angle.
Westerkerke from the North on a bridge over the Prinsengracht. I don't know the street, but you get the canals and a nice arched bridge, with the steeple in the background.
Prinsengracht (K-gracht?) of church and boats.
For reflections off the water, try the early morning before the boats get going and make it too wavy. You may need to do Sunday morning.
Leidsegracht & Keizergracht. NW corner. Nice view of 2 bridges, canals, and buildings. Try an afternoon shot for light.
Leliegracht & Keizersgracht. Same deal as the previous one. This on appears in a lot of postcards.

And of course, there will be lots of other places with just as good or better shot opportunities.

Film

Film is expensive here. I did some price comparing and found what you'd expect: The tourist places (eg, Canal Bus booths) and magazine shops are the most expensive. Albert Heijn (a grocery store chain) is the cheapest. Here are the prices I found in early June 1999.

Prices for Kodak Film in Guilders, including tax
Company	24-100	36-100	24-200	36-200	24-400	36-400
Albert Heijn*	7.95	9.95	8.95	10.95	9.95	11.95
Canal Bus Booth	13.95
Card/Magazine Shop in Magna Plaza	11.95

*: They sell Fuji for the same price and a store brand for about half this price.

So buy your film at home and risk the airport x-rays.

Photoprocessing

It's a rip-off here. Your best best is to take your film home and get it developed there (assuming you live in North America). 1 hour photo here is as high as Fl 35 ($CA 25) for a roll of 24 exposures. In Canada, 1 hour photo is less than $CA 20 for 24 exposures.

I price shopped several places, and here's what I found:

Fotoshop on Westermarkt. 1 hour == 30G, 3 day = 24 G. BUT: add 5G for processing.
Super Photo on Ronkin (includes developing and photo-index): 1 hour == 35G, 3 day = 20G. Once they goofed and only charged me 15G (but they didn't give me a phot-index that time). This is where I had most of my film developed.
Albert Heijn (and Hema?) 3 Day is about 14G, but I haven't had anything developed there yet. Presumably the quality is comparable to Zehr's in Waterloo (a grocery store), where it costs $CA 3.00 to develop a roll of 24, about half of what they're charging here once you add the Canadian taxes.

Airport X-rays

Security at Schiphol Airport refused to hand-check my flim. And they were rude about it. Request it anyway - who knows? Maybe they'll hand check yours. Don't bother arguing with them, though, or trying to explain why you want it hand-checked. Unless, of course, you want to make it take longer than if they had hand-checked your film in the first place.