What are the best physical photo albums?

Question

I'm looking for albums to store my family pictures. These should be nice, acid-free, bound albums. I would like something that has bidirectional photos, but a variety of different layouts and pages.

I guess I'm looking more for something affordable that I can use for years. It doesn't have to be too customized; just so I can use bidirectional photos and can order different layout sheet inserts.

Like these pioneer albums:
http://www.pfile.com/cgi/cart.cgi?db=pioneer_photo_albums.db&search=MBI+B-4000-46+Photo+Album&method=phrase

Answer 1

Most of the nice, bound albums are sold primarily through professional photographers and are very expensive. The four lines I have used are: Pro-Craft, Topflight, Taprell Loomis (TAP) and Leather Album Designs. You can view all these lines by going to http://www.albumsinc.com/. Once you find what you are looking for, you can search for an online retailer to purchase it from.

Icon Distribution (http://www.iconusa.com/online/index.html) offers some inexpensive photo archiving options for prints, slides and negatives.

You can also try your local Ritz Camera...sometimes they have some surprisingly nice albums!

Answer 2

Personally, I've found that Renaissance Albums are far superior to most album companies out there. I've always loved the quality of their work and the craftsmanship of each individual album.

However, the guy above me is right, TopFlight also makes great ablums along with TAP, Florentina and Pro-Craft. These are the main albums used by professionals. It's really a matter of choice once you get to a certain point. Renaissance, TAP and TopFlight offer the most choices and are more widely used over Pro-Craft and Florentina.

Albums Inc is a great place to get your albums as they create each album individually when it's ordered. Another company is Art Leather which has it's own line of products and is quite good. I've heard great things about them in the past.