Getting Traditional Film Developed

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windaar
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Getting Traditional Film Developed

Post by windaar »

I am considering going back to my 35mm film camera to show my kids how photography used to be done. My darkroom equipment is long gone, and of course I never did my own color film. Film is available on Amazon but I need advice on developing. Are there any preferred mail-in places for this or is Walgreen still the default?
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tibbitts
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Re: Getting Traditional Film Developed

Post by tibbitts »

windaar wrote:I am considering going back to my 35mm film camera to show my kids how photography used to be done. My darkroom equipment is long gone, and of course I never did my own color film. Film is available on Amazon but I need advice on developing. Are there any preferred mail-in places for this or is Walgreen still the default?
What will your kids learn about photography with film that they won't learn with digital? Even if you were going to develop and print the film yourself, I'm not seeing the value to the experience. I did developing and printing for years; once I went digital, I never looked back, and I too disposed of my darkroom equipment. I'm not saying there aren't some very high-end art applications for film, but it's not something a person new to photography should start out with today.
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Watty
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Re: Getting Traditional Film Developed

Post by Watty »

Few if any local stores will be able to handle film now but a local camera store can likely get your film developed, but it may not be inexpensive or quick since it is now a specialty service.

I agree that sending the film to a lab and receiving it back in the mail will be make it hard to get the kids interested in film.

There are toy kits what use special paper to basically make contact prints using the sun that they might find interesting.

http://www.amazon.com/Tedco-Sun-Art-Pap ... ds=sun+art

If you want to go beyond that I would think that you could find inexpensive black and white darkroom equipment on Craigslist.
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Re: Getting Traditional Film Developed

Post by livesoft »

One uses a computer to develop pictures nowadays. Composition is still vital as is the interplay between aperture, shutter-speed, and ISO.

While I appreciate the sentiment of teaching kids the technology and recipes, perhaps teaching them cooking and recipes is a better use of their time. After all, there is quite a lot of chemistry going on in the kitchen and that includes surfactant technology when washing dishes.
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windaar
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Re: Getting Traditional Film Developed

Post by windaar »

Thanks, but maybe my original post was not clear. I am not asking if film photography is something you recommend. I am asking if anyone knows of a good resource for film developing. It is not as rare as you think; all Walgreens offer it. And it is not as obsolete as you think:
http://www.wtsp.com/story/news/2014/12/ ... /20996279/
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tibbitts
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Re: Getting Traditional Film Developed

Post by tibbitts »

windaar wrote:Thanks, but maybe my original post was not clear. I am not asking if film photography is something you recommend. I am asking if anyone knows of a good resource for film developing. It is not as rare as you think; all Walgreens offer it. And it is not as obsolete as you think:
http://www.wtsp.com/story/news/2014/12/ ... /20996279/
It would help if you were still more specific. Do you want E6 processing, C41, traditional B&W? Are you simply having the film processed, or printed, or scanned, or ??? It also might help if you explained what aspect of the film photography process you want your kids to experience.
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Re: Getting Traditional Film Developed

Post by rob »

I have used mpix.com in which they send you prepaid envolpes for the film and for a few bucks develop the film and return the negs (uncut). You can then buy prints from them (they digitize the film) and I think even .JPG files (although I have my own film scanner from years gone by so never used that option).

If you want to play with film... I suggest bhvideo.com and using some of the more unused film grains over the blah blah kodak gold stuff. I would also suggest B&W and pick up some local chems as it's a great experience.... even if you just play with using OJ :-)
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livesoft
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Re: Getting Traditional Film Developed

Post by livesoft »

In the old days we sent rolls of film to Clarks and/or Seattle Filmworks.
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Re: Getting Traditional Film Developed

Post by nimo956 »

I'm not sure where you're located, but you should look for specialty stores that cater to artists making prints for gallery exhibitions. That's how I found a place to get my 4x5 film developed. I live in a major city, and there are actually several nearby from which to choose. If you're still stuck, you can search for your city on this forum: http://www.largeformatphotography.info/forum/
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Re: Getting Traditional Film Developed

Post by windaar »

It would help if you were still more specific. Do you want E6 processing, C41, traditional B&W? Are you simply having the film processed, or printed, or scanned, or ??? It also might help if you explained what aspect of the film photography process you want your kids to experience.
What I appreciate about vintage film photography is that, limited to 24 or 36 shots as well as the expense, you took care with each shot. You knew about your lens, lighting, depth of field, and composition. Looking through my Dad's slides and prints, every shot was a winner. That is an art. I understand how it may not matter to most. Nowadays, many fire off 20 shots and pick the best one, that succeeded randomly. Digital photography, to me, encourages this slap-happy approach. Photography, and all good art, is better than finding a "happy accident." I'd like to find a reliable source to develop and print color and B&W rolls of film as I did in the 80s, at which time I had already abandoned my darkroom. The film is readily available on Amazon. I already know about Walgreen; wondering if there are reliable discount sources through the mail as I once mailed to Kodak. Thanks for any ideas.
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livesoft
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Re: Getting Traditional Film Developed

Post by livesoft »

I vehemently disagree that digital photography encourages the slap-happy approach. I don't like to look through lots of wasted shots, so I try to keep the "yield" very high. Perhap for someone starting out, the yield is not high, but with digital one can help teach composition and such with immediate feedback while still on location so that a better photograph can be taken if needed. Sooner rather than later, this composition thing becomes second-nature.

People take care with every shot if they care about the outcome. Yes, many people don't care about the outcome, but they wouldn't with film either.
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Re: Getting Traditional Film Developed

Post by TomatoTomahto »

windaar wrote:You knew about your lens, lighting, depth of field, and composition. Looking through my Dad's slides and prints, every shot was a winner.
I had a darkroom in my basement when I was a teen. My father had been at the Bauhaus and did darkroom work for Andreas Feininger, among others. There was a time when my father was a photojournalist. Our home frequently had guests who were photographers. All that said, I haven't even thought about using film for ages.

Of course your Dad's slides and prints were winners; it was way too much work to bother printing up or saving shots that didn't work out. Who would print a loser?

Why wouldn't a digital photographer know about his lens? A couple of mine are actually from my film cameras (thank you Nikon!).

Lighting: there are more options with ISO range from 100 to 12,800 (that range is native to my D4; they can be pushed to ISO 204,800 if you want your eyes to bleed). I sometimes use flash, but seldom because I have to. In real life, I very seldom use ISO higher than 5,000.

Depth of field is identical to 35mm film (ETA: with a full size sensor, anyway)

Composition is still composition, and probably predates photography by a few centuries.

If you enjoy film, fine. I have friends who still use Polaroids. People are photographers if they are photographers; using digital doesn't interfere with that.
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Re: Getting Traditional Film Developed

Post by frugalguy »

windaar wrote:
What I appreciate about vintage film photography is that, limited to 24 or 36 shots as well as the expense, you took care with each shot. You knew about your lens, lighting, depth of field, and composition. Looking through my Dad's slides and prints, every shot was a winner. That is an art.
+1 Photography was one of my passions at one time. I still apply the lessons learned long ago in composition, lighting, depth of field, etc., but digital photography is different. All of it's done for you and if you don't like the effect, you just crop it and "enhance" it. That takes out a lot of the fun and the sense of artistry/mastery... though it does have its virtues.
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Re: Getting Traditional Film Developed

Post by tibbitts »

frugalguy wrote:
windaar wrote:
What I appreciate about vintage film photography is that, limited to 24 or 36 shots as well as the expense, you took care with each shot. You knew about your lens, lighting, depth of field, and composition. Looking through my Dad's slides and prints, every shot was a winner. That is an art.
+1 Photography was one of my passions at one time. I still apply the lessons learned long ago in composition, lighting, depth of field, etc., but digital photography is different. All of it's done for you and if you don't like the effect, you just crop it and "enhance" it. That takes out a lot of the fun and the sense of artistry/mastery... though it does have its virtues.
When photography first came along, artists who drew or painted proclaimed that photography wasn't "real" art - it was too easy for the unskilled masses. And then when film was invented, photographers who'd grown up coating plates complained that "all of it's done for you." And then when roll film came along, sheet film photographers protested that it was now possible to recklessly shoot frame after frame, without paying attention to composition or lighting. And now we have digital...

What bothers me about looking back on film as some kind of artistic heyday is that we only feel that way because it's what many of us grew up with. It was our technology.

Now about "if you don't like the effect...", consider an unmanipulated print from Adams' "Moonrise" negative, and compare it to the eventual prints he produced - which themselves evolved considerably over the years. He might not have added boulders or clouds in convenient locations, but he did a lot.

As for the "every one was a winner" claims, just like me, lots of enthusiasts - not to mention pros - back in the day filled 55-gallon trash bags with rejected Kodachromes. We just didn't advertise the fact, and maybe we don't remember that so well today. We all remember that with the right equipment it was possible to blow through the entire contents of a 250-exposure bulk magazine in less than a minute, right? Kind of like today, just a lot more expensive, and not available to as many people.
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Re: Getting Traditional Film Developed

Post by Mudpuppy »

As with many things, what you can get out of digital photography is highly dependent on the tools you use. Perhaps the perception of "laziness" comes from people using point-and-shoot sort of digital cameras, such as those within a cell phone. Much like film photographers didn't expect point-and-shoot 35mm cameras to consistently produce masterpieces, neither should one rely on an iPhone for the same. One might on occasion, perhaps even frequent occasion, capture good shots using point-and-shoot, but it's not fair comparing an iPhone to a film-based SLR and then complain about how little the iPhone teaches about photography.

A digital SLR on the other hand provides many of the same learning experiences as a film-based SLR. About the only experience one would not have is the darkroom experience, and it doesn't seem like you're looking for that anyways. And actually, with a digital SLR, you can show them digital equivalents to darkroom techniques like dodging, since you will have the data files to manipulate. You won't get that by sending film off to process.

Now if these are young kids, I could see the appeal of having them first learn on a film-based SLR that you already own. It would be the cheaper financial option, since you'd only have to pay for film and developing. If you went digital, you'd at the very least need a digital SLR body that is compatible with your existing lenses (assuming that such a digital SLR body existed).
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Re: Getting Traditional Film Developed

Post by lululu »

frugalguy wrote: but digital photography is different. All of it's done for you and if you don't like the effect, you just crop it and "enhance" it. That takes out a lot of the fun and the sense of artistry/mastery... though it does have its virtues.
Even then, you can't necessarily get the quality of actual film, at least in my experience. Some of the colors are just not quite right.
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Re: Getting Traditional Film Developed

Post by nisiprius »

lululu wrote:
frugalguy wrote: but digital photography is different. All of it's done for you and if you don't like the effect, you just crop it and "enhance" it. That takes out a lot of the fun and the sense of artistry/mastery... though it does have its virtues.
Even then, you can't necessarily get the quality of actual film, at least in my experience. Some of the colors are just not quite right.
Seriously? Have you ever taken a traditional color print and held it up next to the original subject?

No, the colors in digital photography are "just not quite right" but they never were. I once took a marine ecology course and the guy had been trying to photograph seaweed for years and said it was just impossible--he'd tried many different kinds of color film--and it was mostly color slide film which has a reputation for better color fidelity than print film--and I mean it just wasn't even close. I'm not talking about subtleties. I'm talking about brown seaweed rendered as green.

Flowers, too. Magenta flowers never came out anywhere close, although you didn't know if they turn out light blue or pink.

Kodachrome pictures of skies and grass come out with colors that are very pretty and quite different from the original.

And, of course, if you used a Polaroid camera with Polacolor film, you almost couldn't avoid comparing the photo with the original... just a few minutes apart, no changes in the lighting or anything. Very nice pictures. Not particularly faithful to the actual colors.
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Re: Getting Traditional Film Developed

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Re: Getting Traditional Film Developed

Post by BarryZuckerkorn »

The debate about digital vs film aside (I shoot both and see the value in both), I have used thedarkroom.com with great results, albeit pricey. You can get the prints put on a disk, too. I used to use a local camera store, but it has closed. I choose to spend more than using somewhere like Walgreens because I want a more technically proficient individual handling the process. Good luck and happy shooting.
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Re: Getting Traditional Film Developed

Post by midareff »

frugalguy wrote:
windaar wrote:
What I appreciate about vintage film photography is that, limited to 24 or 36 shots as well as the expense, you took care with each shot. You knew about your lens, lighting, depth of field, and composition. Looking through my Dad's slides and prints, every shot was a winner. That is an art.
+1 Photography was one of my passions at one time. I still apply the lessons learned long ago in composition, lighting, depth of field, etc., but digital photography is different. All of it's done for you and if you don't like the effect, you just crop it and "enhance" it. That takes out a lot of the fun and the sense of artistry/mastery... though it does have its virtues.

With film you got what you got. With digital many things are possible going from a raw (sensor data) format on through the process. You can go to film simulation software and create HDR images or how the photo would have looked if it was done with film. I recently did a Kodachrome 64 conversion. Liked the colors a great deal.
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Re: Getting Traditional Film Developed

Post by PugetSoundguy »

Experimenting with film sounds like great fun. For film developing and printing (with various options for scanning the negatives to electronic files, if you like) you might try North Coast Photographic Services, http://www.northcoastphoto.com, Carlsbad, California.
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Re: Getting Traditional Film Developed

Post by tibbitts »

lululu wrote:
frugalguy wrote: but digital photography is different. All of it's done for you and if you don't like the effect, you just crop it and "enhance" it. That takes out a lot of the fun and the sense of artistry/mastery... though it does have its virtues.
Even then, you can't necessarily get the quality of actual film, at least in my experience. Some of the colors are just not quite right.
Seriouly? In the K14 era (K25, K64, K200) I shot of of both consumer and pro Kodachrome and when you look at bracketed sequences that spanned rolls... you'd think some were taken through a green or magenta filter - a very, very high percentage of time. So I'm not even close to buying the "colors are just not quite right" story. Digital sensors are extremely consistent compared to film+processing, unless you change the white balance settings.

I will say that I experienced more consistency in the KII / K12 era, and E4 and E6 were also somewhat more consistent. But not consistent compared to digital sensors.
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Re: Getting Traditional Film Developed

Post by clearwater »

Sorry that you are not getting an answer to your simple question. I'd encourage you to use film. You can ignore all the Internet commentators who will drone on about why you should use this or that, none of which gets you closer to your goal.

Most consumer processing (the local drugstore, CostCo, etc) has now ended. You will mainly these days be dealing with professional labs by mail order. I would recommend just calling them on the phone and discussing what you want processed. You can also have prints made, contact sheets, or scan rolls onto CD. Also note that slide processing (E6 type film) is now getting harder to process, and there is a smaller subset of pro labs still handling that as a service (there are various reasons for this but mainly involve the number of rolls needed to be run to keep the chemistry in the machines fresh, so only the larger labs continued to handle production volumes.)

I'm listing just a few sources for purchasing film stock, as well as labs. There are others. If you enjoy using film, you might want to consider reading the Analog Photo User Group (http://www.apug.org).

There are three major suppliers for film, as well as several smaller manufacturers.

C41 "negative" color: Kodak, with Ektar and Portra films (160, 400, 800 speed) ** Portra is most likely what you want if you are looking for color film, and the 400 speed is ideal for most purposes. There are also some "consumer" grade films made by Kodak but the cost difference from Portra is small, and Portra is the best color negative film Kodak has ever produced; it is derived from the same technology used for movie films.

E6 "slide" color: Fuji, with Provia and Velvia films

Black and White: Kodak (Tri-X, Tmax); Ilford (many to choose from)

Purchasing:

http://www.bhphotovideo.com
http://www.freestylephoto.biz

Processing: Any of these places can help you (in order from smallest to larger firms). There are many more.

http://www.northcoastphoto.com
http://www.pandalab.com
http://aandi.com
http://www.duggal.com

Some of us do this professionally and despite what all the so-called online "experts" will tell you there are those who still make a very nice living with film. More magazine and ad campaigns are still shot on film stock that you would believe.
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Re: Getting Traditional Film Developed

Post by Photo Man »

clearwater wrote:Sorry that you are not getting an answer to your simple question. I'd encourage you to use film. You can ignore all the Internet commentators who will drone on about why you should use this or that, none of which gets you closer to your goal...
Excellent post clearwater. The film vs. digital debate is such a lightning rod issue these days. I don't understand why so many people are so animated over this and so eager to declare film users as clueless and part of the "unwashed masses". These debates go on in the photography forums all the time. Both formats are valid and will be for a long time. Use what you like and ignore the naysayers.

Clearwater gave you some great sources and links so I won't duplicate those. Film use is still very viable and film sales are actually seeing a slight increase. Especially B&W.
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