Professional Toronto Lab screwed up my film. Help me understand this.

[sandino]

I took an Ilford Delta 100 film to be processed to a well known lab

in Toronto. When I showed up to pick up the film and prints, they

said that by mistake my film was processed using the wrong process

(i.e. they put it through the color processing C41), which resulted

in a screwed up film. How is this possible? Is it true that this

could happen? I don't know anything about processing film, but how

could a professional B&W film be screwed up this way? Thanks for any

explanations.

 

René

[maury_cohen]

René,

It's a world full of humans we live in. Human error happens. Sounds like someone put your roll in the wrong bag. Color chemistry is different than B&W and this resulted in ruined film.

[grant_.]

shyt happens...move on

[jon_porter1]

Probably 99% of what a lab processes is C-41 or E-6. The clerk probably took a quick look

at your film and figured it was just one of the dozens of color print films. Ever since Kodak

processed a non-Kodak roll of E-6 in C-41 chemistry, I always cross out the print ordering

boxes on the drop-off envelope and write "E-6 Slides" in large letters in the special

instructions area. The clerk told me I was the only person having slides processed at that

Target store, so I figured I'd better make my film stand out. Haven't had a problem since.

[robert_davis2]

It's true crap happens but if it was a pro lab you sort of expect better.

[jim_appleyard]

I used to work at a well-known lab and it was in no way professional. The two terms are not interchangable.

[richard_ilomaki]

Many years ago, 40 to be exact, I worked a summer at the largest lab then in Toronto.

 

The eponymous owner of Charles Abel Photofinishing himself would load colour film onto the B&W machine and vice versa. I was able to see in the dim green glow of the loading room and was able to pick out the rolls of colour from the B&W that he had put into the wrong box. Not much is new under the sun.

 

Make a bit of a stink and at least get a roll or few of film.

 

PS Does the lab have brilliant magenta walls?

Cheers

[joe_symchyshyn]

Having worked in 2 professional labs I can attest that every effort was made to do the best job possible. With that said, mistakes did and do happen in life.

 

The usual compensation is to replace the roll of ruined film with like film and offer free processing for that roll.

[vedearduff]

Rene,

 

The problem comes from the method used to form the images. With C41 (and slide film), the images are made up of dye clouds. With traditional B&W film, the images a made up of silver particles.

 

In the process of developing C41 film, all (or almost all), of the silver is removed from the film leaving only the dye clouds. When your roll of Delta 100 was processed as a C41 film, all the silver was removed from the film. Since the images are formed from the silver in the film, the images were removed in that step of the C41 development cycle.

 

I hope this helps you to understand what went wrong and how your film was affected.

 

Vernon

[sandino]

Thank you very much everybody for your comments, specially Vernon for the very clear explanation of what happened.