I'm fairly new to all of this myself, when I started I would have prints made from my negatives but the cost was starting to sway me away from photography. Luckily I recieved an awsome B-day present from my parents, sister and girlfiend which was a Pacific Image 3600 Pro. This was probably the savior of my picture taking. Now I just get cut negatives (1/4 the price) and scan the images i like the best, I save the full size images (20-50 megs)to a cd and keep the cropped and resized images on my HD. I was thinking of asking if i could get 1 print with the 24 images on it, thumbnail size, which will give me a chance to see what my developers can do and make my final printing decisions from there. A quality printer is my next purchase. I think the important thing is to find a good place who care how the final product will turn out.