paul_miller10

In my time I have managed one-hour labs in malls and been a quality assurance technician at Qualex largest plant doing up to 70,00 + rolls a day. If process control is done diligently at any level of production, top quality and predictable product output will be the norm. This means running test strips on a consistent basis with a profound understanding of densitometry, mixing chemicals correctly and checking replenishment rates on schedule, as well as performing scheduled preventive maintainence of the equipment. I could go for YEARS without a chemical change because I had the process under control.

One common bleach problem that occurs in labs such as at Wally World is that the lab "techs" are unaware there is a little aquarium pump in the C-41 processor that aerates the bleach. If they they don't test the airflow the bleach doesn't get aerated and the next thing you know there is a leucocyan dye problem which they try to address by calibrating the printer to compensate.

During the Vietnam War I was am aerial photography specialist supporting the OV-1 Mohawk reconnaissance aircraft. We had a mobile photolab on a truck with two Pako 10" long-roll processors--one for film and one for prints. Both used the same developer (Armed Forces # something) and it was just a matter of the mix to water ratio, so we were developeing film and paper in the same stuff.

I've developed Tri-x in 1:2 Dektol years ago. You get about a three stop push and grain similar to Kodak 2475 Recording Film.

I just recently mastered the Ilford Black and White Reversal process and I am blown away by my B&W slides. If you follow the process closely Ilford Pan F rates at ISO 15. I tested on 35mm strips until I nailed it and am now doing 6X7 cm slides. The trick is the second exposure (flashing). Too little and you have a dark image. Too much and the highlights start to fog. For my flashing I arrived at 20 seconds on each side one foot away from two flourescent tubes.

The emulsion becomes VERY soft, so do not squeegee. Photo-Flo and hang it up to dry.

Color film is made up of a mix of different speed grains, with the ISO making up the greater part of the grains and the speed grains on either side of the ISO accounting for the latitude when processed by the book in the C-41 process.

If you underexpose, you drop out the lower speed fine grains and are left with the coarser high speed grains. The scans on a frontier will look very noisy, so don't give the lab a hard time about the quality of their scans from your improperly exposed film.

You have a lot or work cut out for you. You're going to have to get a Kodak E-6 manual, E-6 test strips, and a densitiometer plus chemicals to massage the ph up or down--especially if you intend to take in work from outside.

Process control of any processing line is paramount and you will have to hold the hand of this leader card machine very tenderly. I have run one of these Noritsu E-6 machines in a fairly busy camera shop, and it can go bad quite easily. Chemical mixing and replenishment rates are critical, not to mention temperature control. Plus, you will have to filter your water supply. This is way beyond a Photo-Therm sidekick.

Same thing happened to me a few weeks ago. Stuff was yellow and it worked great not a month ago. Apparently it crashes pretty fast. Here's a tip: If you have doubts about your developer, develop the film tongue in room light and see if it turns black.

Those built-in memory card slots in computers are deadly. What you have is a corrupted card. The problem with those slots is that they are always hot, and you need to use the Safely Disconnect function in the Taskbar in the lower right corner of your desktop screen to shut the card down as a drive. If you simply pulled the card out, there was probably a file open and now the file header is scrambled. You might be able to restore the card with media recovery software, but most likely it is toast. The safest way to handle those built-in slots is to remove the card after the computer has been shut down.

I always shoot all of my black and white negative films at one stop slower and then underdevelop 30%.

Better shadow detail. This is especially valuable with low speed emulsions since they tend to be more contrasty.

Better tonal range--the under-development keeps the highlight from blocking up with the over exposure.

Finer grain because of shorter development time.

Low speed emulsions don't poush very well because there is a lower diversity of grain speeds than in higher speed emulsions, which is also why they are more contrasty.

Freestyle photo. I just bought some Arista 2 1/4 x 3 1/4 sheet film for my Century Graphic. Also, they are taking orders for a special run of this size in Ilford HP5, but you have to hurry to get your order in this week, I believe, for September delivery.

It is an absolute piece of garbage and the software is useless. Worst $99 I ever spent. Spend the money on a Promaster digital slide duplicater.

Stainless steel reels can build up a contaminant on the surfaces in contact with some films and some developers. try soaking them overnight in a 10% Sodium Sulfite solution to clean them up.

I have a 5 inch globular amber safelight bulb above the enlarger and developer tray area and a small amber bulb at the other end of the sink.I have my safelight system on a dimmer so I can turn it down as low as I want if I am doing extended development times and burning while printing to minimize and fogging of the whites. One of the paper developers I mix--Dassonville Black--takes three minutes of development.

Having worked in the photofinishing game for a few years I've seen my share of chromogenic film. I've seen XP2 come out with all kinds of tints, and the plots on my C-41 line were dead on. The tests strips got run through the densitometer every morning before any film was run. We also sold XP2, and at one point we had a couple of bricks that had a defect with contamination in the emulsion that when we printed it it had small things embedded in the emulsion that looked like rod-shaped bacteria when we printed it. We never did find out what it was.

Unlike silver-based black&white film, chromogenic films are essentially monochrome color negative film and are subject to the effects of heat and time, which is probably what happened to your year-old film. I recently noticed some of my processed Kodak chromogenic 120 negatives are starting to show a color shift even though they have been properly stored.

Chromogenic negatives are kind of seductive because instead of a hard-edged silver halide grain, the image is made up of dye clouds, which give them their silky quality. But, as we all know, in photography you don't get sumthin for nuthin. The trade-off appears to be dubious archival life.

I was contacted by someone who inherited the whole Pentax 110 slr outfit and was looking for photofinishing for 110. My research turned up Dwayne's as the Kodachrome Dwayne's.

I don't think using the words fast, cheap, and lens in the same sentence is correct grammar.

On the CD that came with your E-510 there is a 30-day trial version of olympus studio. In that software there is a camera control option that lets you either control the camera from the computer and automatically download the images, or shoot the camera normally and download the images automatically. If you like the software you can buy a permanent license for $100.

Google "chromium intensifier formula" and then go to Photographers Formulary for the chemicals. They may even have a kit.

I've processed B&W film from as far back as WWII and the Korean War.

For 120 film use the seesaw/tray technique in total darkness cited earlier. I process double the normal time for Super-XX since that was a pretty popular film and speed at that time. You end up with a pretty dense negative that needs to be bleached back to cut through the fog. I use a weak Potassium Ferricyanide solution and then put it in fixer to clear it. You may have to go back and forth between the ferricyanide and the fixer because you are reducing the image by inspection, but you will end up with something printable if the film has been stored in a desk or dresser drawer instead of in the attic or the basement for the last half century.

Olympus sells Smartmedia cards through its online store at https://emporium.olympus.com/innards/emp.asp?val100=100&step1=720&submit1=Go

Plus, they don't gouge you like other internet sellers do because of the scarcity of the cards. Apparently they have a stash put aside for Olympus customers only and don't let them out to stores.

You may not be aware of this, but for years a few pennies here and there from your purchase of black and white films such as Tri-x and Super-XX went to subsidise glass astronomy plates. The idea was to reduce the high cost of this material to astronomers. Glass plates were used way into modern times because of their dimensional stability.

I have a C-3040, C-2100, and C-4040 (as well as several newer Olympus cameras) and I can still buy Smartmedia cards from the Olympus online store. Plus, they don't gouge you like other online dealers.

If your cameras are a C-4040 and a D-395 you HAVE been away for a bit--not quite a decade, though.

When I straighten building I use the SKEW function. It is important to pull the image out at the top a bit and push in a bit at the bottom to retain the proportions of the building.

Another trick is to use the tool window on the left side of your screen as a square--just drag it into the image area for reference. It's much easier to see than using SHOW GRID.

I worked in the photofinishing business for years and in the army maintained aerial photolab equipment, so I'm pretty good working on minilabs.

I converted an AGFA C-41 lab to a black and white lab at one of my employments.

You need to chnage the drive motor over to a variable speed DC motor and add a controller for the drive speed. You can get all the hardware through Graingers.

You need to vary the speed for different processing times for different B&W emulsions.

You will need to run the unit at room temperature, but the solution temperatures will rise through the work day. My solution for bleeding off developer temperature was to make a chiller out of a pickup truck heater core I got at an auto parts store and a fan.

I used three of the tanks for developer and two for rapid fix and the remainders for wash and Photoflo in the last tank. I used Ilford liquid chemistry and Ilford B&W control strips.

It worked very well, and the owner was surprised at the roll count we got once we advertised the service in our local paper. We offered same day and next day service and printed the film on our Fuji Frontier.

In the good old days Kodak made a product called Chromium Intensifier that performed miracles in retrieving under-developed negatives. i always had a few kits in my darkroom. Sadly, it was discontinued--probably because it was incredibly toxic.

One method that will bring back a little intensity is to tone the negatives in a very strong Rapid Selenium Toner bath--1:1 dilution. It does the same thing to film it does on prints--it plates the grains. Most of us use Selenium Toner to push down the blacks in our prints, where it also plates the grains.