I Second That Emulsion (a film thread)

A work colleague has just put 3 x 120 E6 rolls in for processing / hi-res scanning at Snappy Snaps. Total? £72. SEVENTY-TWO QUID. £14 for processing each roll, £10 each for the 15MB scans. He used to work at Jessops and refuses to use them for film processing as a result (they wouldn't be much cheaper).

I sent him a link to the place in Birmingham I used to use (unless they failed to do a scan I'd paid for and didn't respond to emails). Through them the same job would've been £31.70.

by the way, after a Miami trip, I dropped off 19 (!) rolls of film this morning. and the black and white rolls are still in my fridge.

― lou reed scott walker monks niagra (chinavision!), Tuesday, 29 May 2012 13:50 (2 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

going places is just too much, i went to paris for a few days a while ago & was shooting a couple of rolls a day. this time of year is photo-happy anyway. i can't imagine going to pick up nineteen rolls of film though! what a great subsequent evening.

what was the place in birmingham, out of curiosity, Michael? i miss living somewhere that doesn't have a good lab (there was a great place in manchester called something like colorprint i used to go to, where they really knew their shit). jessopps lost a roll of my film, once, so i can't go there, but if not i'd probably not be so picky about dropping off somewhere.

man I got a lil overwhelmed with a mere four rolls from montana, I still haven't gone into them for any work aside from a minor crop or two

http://www.metrocolourlab.com/

Really not a very good website - you basically have to load some of the printable order forms to found out what some of the prices are and even then they're slightly contradictory.

Oh, the Jessops horror stories my work pal tells me. The retired couple who came back from a month in Hawaii with 25 rolls of E6 and 19 of them were then basically destroyed by the off-site processing (they can only do C41 in-store) - that was a good conversation for him to have.

oh man. yeah. i think i hesitated before ever mailing any film; to shoot some & then wrap it up and just leave it to the chance of royal mail just felt insane. & to take your film to somewhere that might not cherish it & treat it under the photographic oath of neurotic hypervigilant care unnerves me. dropping stuff off at a lab i try to check the negatives to see that they were all even printed, which doesn't always happen on account of scanners, &c. but going somewhere nice is reassuring.

on another note, however, 35mm film is 3 for 2 at jessops, at the moment. i'm still fussing around about what film to use & trying to find solutions to getting hold of something nice, whether it's expired or bought in bulk or whatever. & you can go buy a few, varied rolls of ilford B&W for £4 a roll, so it works for something.

how many of you have like a dedicated film fridge?

Nah, it's all in there with the cheese and beer and what-have-you.

how many of you have like a dedicated film fridge?

― catbus otm (gbx), Friday, 1 June 2012 18:09 (8 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i don't refrigerate my films. i think because i always shared a fridge that i imagined could end up in buttery films. i should probably start refrigerating them?

I only refrigerate the stuff that's meant to be stored below 10C - yr E6 stuff and so on.

I've taken to putting my film in the fridge, though very little of it is particularly "special", mostly just cheap stuff. I got a big plastic tub with clip lid to store it in to minimise the chance of mishap, though! (http://www.flickr.com/photos/michaellambert/7218261068/)

I've been using Asda for dev-only processing as it's cheap and the opening hours are convenient for me, otherwise my local option is Jessops. I have access to a darkroom for B+W through my girlfriend, will be attempting to develop my first ever roll tonight! Have previously done a couple of prints.

I pop it in the fridge, because, why not? And sometimes I've got a lot of film sitting around, and we keep the apartment mostly un-airconditioned.
good luck on the the black and white development, btw!

yeah good goin, michael! i'm thinking about starting developing B&W too, would love to know what your learning curve's like. my friend - who i think possibly used to print colour phots, so this is a whole other thing - was talking about how much money she'd spend on equipment so that she could keep playing with an image, keep printing variations. but i still wanna do it.

will maybe put all of my slide &c film in the fridge. thanks ILP.

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7245/7331389542_28b769ae53_z.jpg

A fairly nondescript image from the roll I developed, pleased it actually worked - was quite exciting taking the film out and seeing the images on the negative. Happy that the process is pretty straightforward, I think sometimes that reading about a practical process instead of trying it makes things seem more complicated.

On a tangent, Poundland in the UK are now selling Agfa Vista Plus 200, apparently re-branded Fuji. Picked up half a dozen rolls today, will see how I get on. Off to put them in the fridge...

On a tangent, Poundland in the UK are now selling Agfa Vista Plus 200, apparently re-branded Fuji. Picked up half a dozen rolls today, will see how I get on. Off to put them in the fridge...

ty so much for this!
& your phot's nice. geometric. photographic negatives are so beautiful. i don't routinely handle them - like they're always in a sheet or whatever, & sometimes i take them out and it's a real moment.

Hopefully on topic, I created a group on Flickr for live music/gigs shot using film:

http://www.flickr.com/groups/livemusiconfilm/

Ok, Jessops, you don't get any more of my Ektachrome 100...

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7077/7163023109_da1f77db1a_z.jpg

Had to crush the blacks on the JPG to get any kind of contrast but it just looks like a bad processing job to me. Yeah, it's well past expiry, but I've not seen such results with expired fine-grain slide film before. It looks like ISO 1600. The colour shifts may well be down to the chemicals going off.

Ok, the light is completely different here (and Lulu is two years younger!) but this is Ekta 100, decently processed, I think:

http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3645/3599652131_9350eb0e15_z.jpg%3Fzz%3D1

Hmm, is that not showing up?

Trying again:
http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3645/3599652131_9350eb0e15_z.jpg%3Fzz%3D1

Oh, forget it.

getting decent development of chromes is a huge pain. maybe it was once easier, but hardly anyone does it anymore, with most places mailing out to one of a few local labs. I messed around with some ektachrome and provia recently, and it turned out not to be worth it for the added cost, and the lousy looking results. I think the slides themselves actually looked pretty ok, but the scans were horrible. like absolutely bonkers atrocious, with bizarre cropping, completely out of focus, blown out everywhere. never seen anything worse. and the scans I got from duane's weren't great either. aaaand the scans that I can make at home aren't great either (scanning positives is a whole 'nother matter from scanning negatives). there's probably some place in nyc that will do a good job, but I don't care to spend the time/money trying to find it.
so I opt out.

plus developing/scanning costs a total of $20! crazy. a roll of negatives, from purchasing the film to taking home the developed roll costs me under $6.

Wal-mart is the best option for E-6 (as noted by Dayo above), everything is run through Fuji or Dwayne's lab and comes back for $5-6. They have a scanning service too, I think.

have a couple of rolls of ektar 100 to run through... is it usually p.good?

ektar is real nice. take pictures of some red stuff.

dumb q that i could google but you guys know better: what is the best way to buy film in bulk? the BW stuff i've been getting has been from my local CVS, but lately they haven't had it reliably, and the substantially-closer of the last two camera/film stores in mpls closed up shop a while ago.

also my one and only photog buddy (and an actual ~pro~, who has the most insanely charmed existence of anyone i know) is planning on setting up one of his rooms in his new apartment as a developing (but not printing) space, and said I could use it anytime. he also has a nice flatbed scanner, but given the time-consuming nature of scanning (right?) i'd rather do it at home.

plus all yr talk about shitty scans is making me wonder how different all my film pics would look with better scanning (they're all low-rez, for starters, none larger than 1900px in any dimension i think, which is basically half what my gf1 (languishing in the glove box of my car) gets. like what's the point of lugging around m lenses if you can't pull the detail, amirite

*haven't had it reliably AND never have more than two in stock

-BHPhoto or freestylephoto.biz, I have started using Kentmere 400, which apparently is Ilford's low-cost version of HP5. you can also trawl craigslist, or eBay for expired film. if you're really ~serious~, you can buy film in 100 foot reels and load it yourself with a bulkloader. you save about 25-30 cents a roll with this method iirc. some guy near me is selling a bunch of bulk film, I am thinking about biting...probably more of a hassle than anything tbh.

-your negs may very well look much better with better scans

unfortunately they only have the 24 exposure version, but adorama carries fuji superia 400 at $1.79 a roll. that's pretty much as cheap as it ever gets: http://www.adorama.com/FJCHSP24.html
B&H has the 36 exposure version for $3.19.

Kodak gold 400 is under 3 a roll iirc at bhphoto

awesome dudes, thanks

q: can superia be developed at any old place? walmart, cvs, etc?

totally. completely normal stuff.

I think I've mentioned before too, for a cheapo consumer film, it's surprisingly fine grained. best if over-exposed by a stop.

soooo shoot it at 200, then?

yeah, I always set it at least a stop over, so for an auto-exposing camera, I'd rate it at 200. when walking around, I'll shoot in daylight at 1/250 at f11, so even two stops then. but one stop over and you can't go wrong.

you really can't 'blow out' highlights in negatives the same as in slides or digital. the lab you use might blow out highlights in the scan, but if you were to rescan yourself you'd probably find they were still there all along.
I had an example from a while back when I first got my scanner of a lab scan where the sky and many highlights were pure white, but when I rescanned at home, I found plenty of blue with clouds and all still there.

maybe a dumb q, but: if u set the film speed to 200, and shoot in daylight at f11 + 1/250, isn't that three stops over?

400 --> 200
f16 --> f11
1/500 --> 1/250

? this stuff is confusing :-?

right, here it is.
lab scan:
http://www.altairnouveau.com/labscan.jpg

home scan:
http://www.altairnouveau.com/homescan.jpg

and even still, I'd get more detail from the home scan today, since I know what I'm doing a little better (you can still see blown highlights on the house in the background, which I would know how to avoid now).

you only need to either open up the aperture or slow the shutter speed, not both, to move one stop from 400 to 200

f11 at 250 would be the 100 ISO setting since you opened up two stops

xpost: if you're setting the speed and f-stop manually, then it doesn't matter how you've rated the film. so for sunlight the rule usually is (for 400 speed film) 1/500 at f/16. slow down a stop to 1/250 and open up a stop to f/11 and that's two stops total.
so in your equation the 400 --> 200 step only makes a difference if the camera is calculating exposure. but if you switch over to manual it doesn't affect anything.

my head hurts

per sunny 16, metering 400 film in daylight would give f16 + 1/500. setting the film speed to 200 would make that same meter give f16 + 1/250. one stop. f11, two stops.

ok i get it now, duh

I just
think about everything in stops. increase a stop = double the light. decrease a stop = half the light.

the good news is that film is forgiving. err on the side of overexposure and everything will be cool. just not with slides!!!

I started shooting my B&W film at 200, then developing at -20% time from 400. oh my god! amazing.

negative scans or it didn't happen

& what was the box speed of the film?

negative scans or it didn't happen

haha board motto

hi dere

http://distilleryimage3.s3.amazonaws.com/cc4a3632b5ba11e1a39b1231381b7ba1_7.jpg

I have a similar bag I just purchased! adorama is the best