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Shops still developing 35mm?


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By "shops," if you're referring to retail stores that still do on-site processing and printing, there aren't too many. Where I live in the USA, Walmart, Walgreens, and Costco haven't offered 1-hour processing in a while, and if they do accept film, they mail it out elsewhere. Most larger cities probably have at least one photo finishing lab. As far as mail-in labs, there are still dozens that do: Dwayne's Photo, Dale Labs, Blue Moon, North Coast Photographic Services, The Darkroom, and others. Check online for services offered. Edited by m42dave
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I'm fortunate to live in a town with 3 C-41 labs, and one those does E-6 also(although not sheet film). The one that does E-6 I think has been in business since the 1940s, use to have a half dozen locations scattered around, and even did K-14 on site for a really long time(I want to say 1960s to probably late 1990s or early 2000s). Now they're basically relegated to a back room of a larger business that, in addition to doing large format printing, can do canvas/metal/coffee cups etc. Now, also, I've had them just BARELY get E-6 done for me if I took it first thing in the morning and had enough, but it usually takes them a couple of days now until enough comes in for them to do it. They do mail order for several camera stores around the country, which is probably a lot more business than their walk-in E6.

 

15 years ago, from my recollection, there were 8 or so C-41 minilabs tucked into larger stores(IIRC, 1x Walmart, 2x Walgreens, 2x Rite-Aid, 1x CVS, 2x Kroger). All of those places had send-off service also that was less expensive and usually took 3 days.

 

The larger town 30 miles east probably had 50 minilabs across all the WalMart, grocery stores, and pharmacies. They had a real honest to goodness pro lab that could do both C-41 and E-6 up to 8x10, processed B&W by hand, and could reliably get your E-6 back to you by 2:00 or so as long as you got it there by 10:00(they did two E-6 runs a day-one at 10:00 and one at 2:00-the 2:00 ones would be ready the next day). I even used them for B&W on a few occasions when I didn't want to do it myself, and I've never otherwise had anyone else do B&W. They did everything in D76, but would offer you the choice of straight or 1:1, and did vary timing for different emulsions.

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Haven’t really thought about 35mm for years. What companies develop them? Still miss my old Pentax ME super

Have a blast. Shoot a roll and have them develop and scan them for you. Then play with them in post processing software and post here, on FLickr and print some. If you get addicted, you can get your own scanner later and set up your own darkroom. I've only done only the former. My wife would shoot me if I tried to set up a darkroom. :)

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I've had good experiences getting C-41 film developed inexpensively by the MPIX company:: Film Developing : Help : Mpix

They really want to sell you photo based products, not just develop your film, but they will send you postage-paid mailers, develop your film at a cost of 19 cents an image, and scan your film at 6MP resolution. The scanned images can then be downloaded from their site, and your negatives will be returned to you at no extra charge.

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Haven’t really thought about 35mm for years. What companies develop them? Still miss my old Pentax ME super

 

There are many many labs developing film these days- pretty much anywhere & everywhere. Most will send your negatives home to you and email you scans. There's an entire legion of folks out in the world who just work with scans. Film is hugely popular now-a-days, f@c3b00k and Instagram and Flickr are excellent places to see what people are doing with film photography. Black and white, C-41, E6, ECN-2, Dr5-chrome, pretty much any process can be lab developed right now. Some of the more obscure process are harder to find but for normal film processing the labs are practically a dime a dozen.

 

Most labs can and will also make you a print of any photo you wish- most will make an inkjet print from a file, fewer will make you a lab print from your negative- be it silver gelatin or color, and fewer still are doing carbon prints, platinum palladium, and other alternative process printing.

 

But to answer your question directly, I've used, in the past year, the following U.S. labs

 

Richard Photo Lab in CA: B&W, E6, C-41

Old School Photo lab in NH: B&W, C-41

Boutique Photo Lab in TN: ECN-2

Blue Moon Camera & Machine in OR: B&W, C-41

Hidden Light LLC in AZ: silver gelatin lab print

Edited by Ricochetrider
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