 BetterPhoto Member |
Film and Developing I am aware of the fact that I have nothing but a sponge for a brain with a camera right now. I am currently "teaching myself" about photography in general, I am also looking into taking classes and joining a club as well as entering a few contests for fun. I am miles ahead of myself in asking this question but I can't help it I am curious! Lets just say I was a professional photographer and I ran my own studio, I take a picture of a person using a 35mm SLR camera and I want to develop this film without hurting my quality...is there a place you could send your photos (film) to be developed professionally???? Because I hate to say it but I am not sure that I would really enjoy having a dark room and doing all that work let alone learning it!!!! At the same time though I am not talking about running up to the one hour photo at walmart!!! haha!! For example say I worked at Sears Portrait Studio (god help me hehe!) and I am using a large format camera to take these photos and when I am done I would send them off to be processed and all because we all know that Sears doesn't have a dark room! I think you hopefully understand the basics of my question! Please Respond!!! Thanks, Rachel
|
|
|
|
||
|
John A. Lind |
Rachel, You're looking for what is often called a "full service professional lab" but you usually won't find one in a small city, only in larger ones (about 100k or more in population). Look in the telephone directory yellow pages under photo processing. They're not national chains either, although they may have a few locations covering a region. A full service pro lab can do things *in-house* such as Ektachrome "E-6" slide film developing, push and pull processing, slide duplication, flat artwork copy, extremely large prints (as in 50 inches), prints from slides, silver gelatin fiber-based B&W prints, and "drum scans" that can make extremely high resolution digital files from film. In printing, they typically offer less expensive "machine prints" but also can do custom prints with cropping, and "dodging and burning" to your specifications. Nearly all can retouch negatives (labor intensive and expensive). About the only things they would likely have to send somewhere else are Kodachrome developing which requires a complex K-14 process, Ektachrome EIR developing if the AR-5 process is desired for it (EIR is a specialized IR film), and Agfa Scala B&W slide developing which also requires a very special process (only three labs in the U.S. handle Agfa Scala). I've listed these services so you can tell the difference between a high end consumer lab limited to performing mainstream color negative work in-house, and a true pro lab which can do just about anything with film, digital files and printing either one. Ask for a catalog of their *in-house* services and look for some of the more exotic ones I've mentioned (i.e., push/pull film developing and dodging/burning custom prints to specification). How I found the one I use: You *should* notice a difference in using a good pro lab. They use high end lab equipment, it's better maintained, and the personnel that operate it are better trained compared to consumer labs. They cater to pros whose reputation and business requires high quality work that cannot afford any screw-ups. Those that don't maintain high quality go out of business quickly. Pro photographers know too well what they and their equipment are capable of producing, can easily distinguish the difference between photographer errors or camera equipment failure and lab screw-ups, and won't tolerate anything less than near perfection from the labs they use. -- John
|
|
|
|
||
|
This old forum is now archived. Use improved Forum here
Report this Thread |
||