Doing film again...

Hey,

I'm considering picking up my film cameras again and I need to know who to go to to get it developed, if they will allow me to specify developers and push/pull etc.

I'll scan the negatives.

Thanks,

John

 

Also, I'm shooting 120 (6x6 6x12) and 35mm.

Fotoimpex, Berlin?

I recommend DIY!

small scale processing to your needs and demands is very expensive, if somebody charges you an employee's minimum wage + rent +... + shipping +...

Should have mentioned I'm in Canada. But I don't mind an excuse to DIY!

I have been doing my DIY developing for over 10 years in a "kit" made up of an Igloo cooler holding all the liquids for (1) 135-36 or (1) 120 roll. Nikor reel loading is done in a changing bag, the actual development at the kitchen sink. Drying takes place in a shower stall. Using stainless steel tanks & reels allows super clean gear. Using a 450ml tank also allows both 35 & 120 materials.

Loading the film & wet chemistry takes just under an hour.

Go for it & DIY. . .beats the hassles of farming the film out.

There are fewer places that will process film. I know a lot of people in the states like Dwaynes if you don't mind mail order but I'm sure there are places closer to you that can do a decent job.

 

And yes DIY is a viable option. That's what I do. Changing bags are pretty inexpensive and so are tanks and reels. There are many fans of the stainless steel type that Bill has but beginners often find the Patterson tanks and reels easier to start out with.

 

I have both the Patterson and Stainless reels. One thing nice about Patterson reels is that they are adjustable to take either 35mm or 120mm film.

 

For me doing my own processing is a big part of the fun of working with film.

Honestly . . . If you are going to shoot film, mail it out for processing and scanning or scan yourself and make digital prints, I would save the money and shoot digital.

For send-out developing, XP2 is C-41 process, which is still somewhat easy to find places

to do for a reasonable price. It is standardized and mini-labs do it well.

 

Otherwise, as above, DIY is the best choice.

 

I started when I was 9 years old, doing it in the bathroom. For film only, the supplies

are pretty easy to find and use.

 

I do still do film, either sent out (color), or in home (black and white), and often scan myself.

 

But most often, I also have along a digital camera along when I am doing it. Sometimes

both are used for the same subject.

 

A big reason for using film is analog wet printing, but not the only reason.

 

There are enough places doing digital wet printing (that is, only silver halide

based (usually) color paper). Not quite the same, but often good enough.

Every passing month sees fewer and fewer options for black and white processing, and C-41, for that matter.

I send my C-41 chemistry stuff to A trusted name in photo processing for over 60 years - Dwayne's Photo but do regular B&W negative film myself.

 

All you need is the chemicals, a bag full of dark, and some 'daylight' film developing cans.

There is still enough fun in doing black and white film processing for me, that I enjoy doing it,

and don't count my time in the cost.

 

There are still labs in Seattle doing C-41, and at least one E-6, and I don't do those enough to

use up the chemistry before it goes bad. The shipping charges for send out processing make

it a lot more expensive, unless you collect enough rolls to send together.

use up the chemistry before it goes bad.

 

How true-- even for the B&W chemistry that can be a problem.

 

I just don't have the capability for temperature control that I used to have in regard to the color films.

In college, I did E6 in the student darkroom, with a big tray full of water, and a bowl

of hot water to add as it cooled. The hot water faucet was barely 100F, so I needed

an little immersion heater to keep the hot bowl hot. I did 16 rolls that way.

 

But I think it is mostly that B&W chemistry costs less, so it doesn't bother

me as much if it goes bad.

Why would you limit your post-processing or print options by shooting a monochrome C-41 film? It's not as if it costs any less than colour negative material to buy or process.

 

The days of having to buy special panchromatic paper to get a B&W positive from colour negative film are well over. A scanner really doesn't care what you do with its output - desaturate it to monochrome, 'solarize' it, or wind up the saturation to day-glo levels. Whatever takes your fancy.

 

In addition, if you start with a colour negative, you can emulate almost any camera filter effect imaginable - polarising filter excepted.

Why would you limit your post-processing or print options by shooting a monochrome C-41 film? It's not as if it costs any less than colour negative material to buy or process.

 

The days of having to buy special panchromatic paper to get a B&W positive from colour negative film are well over. A scanner really doesn't care what you do with its output - desaturate it to monochrome, 'solarize' it, or wind up the saturation to day-glo levels. Whatever takes your fancy.

 

In addition, if you start with a colour negative, you can emulate almost any camera filter effect imaginable - polarising filter excepted.

 

Now that the Kodak chromogenic B&W films are gone (except in some of our freezers), the choice is XP-2.

 

XP-2 doesn't have an orange mask, so is easy to print with regular black and white paper.

I believe it still has the usual low gamma, so you might need the appropriate paper grade.

Using XP-2 at least give you the chance for wet, no-scan printing.

(I do have some Panalure, in case I need that.)

 

If you are already decided for black and white printing, even with scans, and don't need

the emulated filter effect, it still seems a good choice.

 

In theory, there are a lot of filters that you can't exactly emulate. Any filter that changes

somewhat fast within the sensitivity range of a color layer won't emulate. It might be that

many of the stronger filters do go close to the color layer sensitivities.

XP-2 doesn't have an orange mask, so is easy to print with regular black and white paper.

I'll scan the negatives

Any filter that changes

somewhat fast within the sensitivity range of a color layer won't emulate.

- Care to elaborate on that?

 

Contrary to popular opinion, film is not analogue. Halide crystals are either developed, or not developed. There's no in between. Likewise with the dye clouds that are formed by developer oxidation products. They can only show one particular shade of Cyan, Yellow or Magenta. Therefore any exposure within the sensitivity spectrum of a colour layer will only produce a fixed dye response. The film just cannot show nuanced shades of filter colour; only a dithered approximation made up of tiny spatters of 3 particular dye colours.

 

Here's a photomicrograph of what colour film is like at the individual dye-cloud level.

Colour negative film with the orange contrast mask removed.

Edited October 9, 2019 by rodeo_joe|1

- Care to elaborate on that?

 

Contrary to popular opinion, film is not analogue. Halide crystals are either developed, or not developed.

(snip)

 

Film is analog but not continuous.

 

Optical density is, more or less, an analog of incident light intensity.

 

A clock with hands is analog, even when the hands step every second.

The angular position of the hands is analogous to minutes and seconds.

 

We live in a quantum world, where many things that people think of as

continuous, are actually discrete. That doesn't make them digital.

 

Magnetic (audio and video) tape is analog, where magnetization is

analogous to audio pressure or video optical intensity. As with film,

it is discrete, as each magnetic grain is either magnetized one way

or the other, such that the average follows the desired input.

-

(previous snip on filtering of color negatives.

 

Care to elaborate on that?

 

As a worst case example:

 

Consider a scene partly illuminated by a sodium vapor lamp, with narrow lines

at 589.0nm and 589.6nm. One can get a filter with a very narrow absorption,

maybe centered on 589.3nm and width 1nm, that will absorb those lines, but

pass everything else.

 

No filter on a color negative can do anything like that. (The lines are yellow,

and will go into both the red and green layers of the film.)

 

Note that this is not a hypothetical case. San Jose, CA, uses low pressure

sodium street lighting. There is an astronomical observatory nearby that then puts

filters on its telescopes to block those lines.

 

On the other hand, high pressure sodium has a fairly broad spectrum, due

to collision broadening. The actual case in San Jose happened when they were

planning to convert from mercury (with a few narrow spectral lines) to HPS.

The astronomers complained, and so San Jose did a test, putting LPS lamps

on some streets and HPS on others, and waited. No complaints about either,

so they converted the whole city to LPS lamps.

As a worst case example:

 

Consider a scene partly illuminated by a sodium vapor lamp, with narrow lines

at 589.0nm and 589.6nm. One can get a filter with a very narrow absorption,

maybe centered on 589.3nm and width 1nm, that will absorb those lines, but

pass everything else.

How does that have any practical bearing on a comparison between use of a chromogenic B&W film, and a colour one?

 

Besides, a scene solely illuminated by low-pressure sodium vapour lights, and shot through a filter that blocks the sodium lines, would effectively be unlit and completely underexposed. What would be the point of that exercise? (Yes, I know it has applications in astro-photography, but that really isn't the area of interest here.)

 

The point is that any readily available wide-band photographic filter - Yellow, orange, R25 etc. - can be readily emulated post scanning from a colour negative. Whereas with chromogenic B&W film, you'd have to carry all those filters and visualise their effect accurately. A skill not easily acquired with film's inherent long delay between shooting and seeing the result.

 

Why people have to invent off-the-wall scenarios to create a spurious argument against a perfectly valid suggestion, I just don't know.

We live in a quantum world, where many things that people think of as

continuous, are actually discrete. That doesn't make them digital

There are a good many people that do mistakenly believe that film is capable of continuous greyscale representation. And I would argue that only having two states to a halide crystal - exposed and developable or unexposed, or reduced to silver or dissolved in fixer - is about as digital as you can get.

Edited October 11, 2019 by rodeo_joe|1

Hey,

I'm considering picking up my film cameras again and I need to know who to go to to get it developed, if they will allow me to specify developers and push/pull etc.

I'll scan the negatives.

Thanks,

John

 

Also, I'm shooting 120 (6x6 6x12) and 35mm.

 

Hi John! I have done the same recently - unearthed my old film cameras, and bought some more, too (medium format this time - I was only shooting 35mm back in the day). It's great fun, you'll enjoy the learning process, or getting back into old, pre-digital thinking habits.

 

I'd recommend learning to do the processing yourself, at least for black and white. It's what I have done last year, and it's cheaper than using a lab, in the long run. You will be amazed at the degree of control you will be able to achieve, by testing different film stocks, different chemistries, and variations in the processing. For scanning, you have a bunch of options: try a dedicated Plustek scanner if you plan on doing 35mm, or an Epson V550 if you're going medium format route. Get in touch if you need more advice on that!

 

The XP2 C41 chromogenic option is a great idea IME. I've shot a lot of XP2+ in 120 format recently. The important thing is that this film has its own, very distinctive look. It is *very* different, when scanned or printed, fro silver halide-based black and white material.

 

For both XP2+ and traditional silver based film, I'm finding I'm able to achieve a look that I simply am unable to simulate with photoshop or computers. But that's just me, in spite of working with computers to earn a living, I am just terrible at using them to process my photos! Besides, one of the points of shooting film again, for me, is that I want to reduce my post-processing to a minimum. You'll find film will allow you to do that: you'll do much more thinking in the minutes, or seconds, before taking the shot, that later, in front of a computer. I basically now use photoshop only for crop, levels and resizing, which is great!

 

One final point that might be relevant for you, too: shooting black and white film in the field, as opposed to colour film to then convert to B&W later on a computer, for me at least, is extremely important: I find that when I *know* I only have black and white film loaded in my camera, as opposed to colour film, I will go searching for a different type of shot, light and composition.

How does that have any practical bearing on a comparison between use of a chromogenic B&W film, and a colour one?

 

Besides, a scene solely illuminated by low-pressure sodium vapour lights, and shot through a filter that blocks the sodium lines, would effectively be unlit and completely underexposed. What would be the point of that exercise? (Yes, I know it has applications in astro-photography, but that really isn't the area of interest here.)

 

The point is that any readily available wide-band photographic filter - Yellow, orange, R25 etc. - can be readily emulated post scanning from a colour negative. Whereas with chromogenic B&W film, you'd have to carry all those filters and visualise their effect accurately. A skill not easily acquired with film's inherent long delay between shooting and seeing the result.

 

Why people have to invent off-the-wall scenarios to create a spurious argument against a perfectly valid suggestion, I just don't know.

 

(snip)

 

Any filter that is somewhat sharp, with the edge not close to the red-green and green-blue transitions

of film sensitiviites won't be accurately represented after exposure.

 

In the early days of color negative film, it was believed that source color temperature could be adjusted later.

 

After not so long, Kodak realized that wasn't true and started making tungsten balanced negative films.

It can be somewhat adjusted later, but not quite close enough.

 

But yes, many kinds of color filter effects can be done later.

Any filter that is somewhat sharp, with the edge not close to the red-green and green-blue transitions

of film sensitiviites won't be accurately represented after exposure.

But none of the filters commonly used with B&W film have that characteristic - unless outside of the visible spectrum. And B&W film itself won't discriminate between a filter that has a sharp cutoff and one that gently tails away.

In the early days of color negative film, it was believed that source color temperature could be adjusted later.

Only by those that hadn't tried it!

 

Of course you get a strong colour cast from severely underexposing the blue-sensitive layer, but that hardly matters with a monochrome conversion. The effect, of reds being lightened and blues darkened, is no different from shooting the same scene with uncorrected panchromatic B&W film.

 

(snip on filters)

 

Of course you get a strong colour cast from severely underexposing the blue-sensitive layer, but that hardly matters with a monochrome conversion. The effect, of reds being lightened and blues darkened, is no different from shooting the same scene with uncorrected panchromatic B&W film.

 

Starting about when I started in photography, the outside of the box of Verichrome Pan says "Use blue bulbs for flash".

 

It seems that getting the grays right matters.

Getting back to the original question, there are quite a lot of film labs that will develop your film here in the U.S> and I have to believe there are plenty in Canda too. DO a search, the Internet is your friend.

 

I've been using Richard photo Lab in Valencia California, Blue Moon in Portland, Oregon and more recently Old School Photo Lab up in New Hampshire. Scans from places do seem to vary- some labs use scanners similar to what the average consumer can buy, others use better gear to deliver better scans. Goods and services do vary. Check websites and if you have to, make an actual phone call!

 

Best luck with it all.