Anyone have B&W film processed thru Qualex?

[craig_sander]

And if so, how good or bad of a job did they do?

I have a local lab here that swears they do the best B&W processing around. At

16 dollars, the develop and provide a contact sheet.

If I send my film out through the drugstore, it goes to Qualex, costs less, but

if its the same or better, why not?

[AaronFalkenberg]

I used to run a lab that sent out to Qualex. They develop fine, but the prints of several customers came back way too contrasty. Really blocked shadows and blown highlights. Fourtunately, once the B+W negs were developed, I could run them through our in house printer, and with some quick adjustments, give them much better prints.

[randmcnatt]

GO BACK! IT"S A TRAP!

 

I say that as the guy (well, one of the guys) who processed black-and-white film at Qualex/Dallas (the old Magnacolor location). We got all the black and white film from just about every volume/discount film processor in the US, but it was still only like 100 rolls on a good day, compared to 36,000 rolls of chrome on a slow day. We were the "outlab" - we had to take all the oddball stuff to keep the lucrative chrome business. Quality control was NOT a big priority for the odd films, just shipping product. The big C-41 labs that sent us the BW could not care less about the quality, either, and I got the distinct impression they were just as happy if those low-profit customers took their business elsewhere.

 

BW was spliced together, sometimes 120/220, 35mm, 126 and 110 all on the same reel, and processed in an ancient, wheezing, "repurposed" Paco machine, then printed on surplus Kodak S-printers.

 

The last I heard, B/W was going to the San Antonio plant, but it's probably somewhere else by now. Maybe things have changed in the new location(s), but you can bet B/W tonal quality is still not high on the daily checklist.

 

Give it a try, though, with a throw-away roll, and let us know how it turns out. Be sure to write "B/W" in black magic marker really, really big, or it's just as likely to be processed as C-41 or E-6.

[robert lee]

It's really worthwhile trying to process B&W yourself. It's really quite simple, fast, and the results will be of higher quality. As for cost, even using the most expensive chemicals it won't run more than maybe $0.80 per 35mm roll.

 

Ilford (www.ilfordphoto.com) has a very well done tutorial PDF. Do take a look.

[carl_klitzke]

I sent a roll or two to Qualex, and it came through way better than anything I've sent to Fujicolor, but they prints weren't totally amazing by any means. I suggest processing your own negs and 1) buy a scanner or 2) take the uncut negs to a lab and have them run proofs/scan/etc. Processing yourself really isn't very difficult, it's pretty cheap, and it really brings you into the whole photography process.

[scott loveless]

A few years ago, after a relocation, my search for a local B&W lab didn't turn up much, so I started sending film to Qualex. (I'm in southern PA, if that helps determine which lab it actually went to.) The negs came back scratched, the cut lines were in the frames, and on at least two rolls I had these little black dots on every print. The dots weren't on the negs. After having 6 or so rolls of 120 butchered by Qualex I bought what I needed to process the stuff myself. This is what I would recommend. I cannot recommend Qualex.