A very disturbing conversation...

I diy my b&w but I still send out my color. The lab I work with is very good and I like their work. I know my business is not going to keep them going on its own but I hope it helps.

My 2¢ worth is if you're a DIY kind of person, you can alway buy a C-41 kit and soup the film at home.

Photo chemicals work better on C-41 than soup. I never thought that Campbell soup could ever do a decent developing of any film.

Jessestr said:

Most small labs won't be processing too much as big players like MeinFilmLab (Germany)... take the market.

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That is a 3 person business.
Big Players are those who run processing plants, printing tens of millions of photographs from films.

The story you told is the very same one that lead to my lab ditching E6 and C41 because spare parts are rare or the replacement cost outweighs the benefits. We will No doubt continue to see this decline in processing availability as old machines become increasingly costly for businesses to maintain.

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You will have to develop your own IF you can get the chemicals. BIG IF.

I recommend a digital camera and learn to process for tone curve to make it look like film rather than flat digital. Off topic to go into it here.

Ronald Moravec said:

You will have to develop your own IF you can get the chemicals. BIG IF.

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There is no IF I can drive to FreeStyle, order on the telephone or order on internet.

Ronald Moravec said:

I recommend a digital camera and learn to process for tone curve to make it look like film rather than flat digital. Off topic to go into it here.

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A non starter on APUG. Try flying this on DPUG.

C41 and E6 processing for ALL standard film sizes is readily available around here (SF Bay Area), though you might have to shop around a bit for someone with the 5x7 or 11X15 hangers. No need to panic and go digital - do that if that is what really WANT to do, however. The turnaround for 35mm and 120 film is usually next day, for 4x5 or 8x10 sheet film, about four days.

I think we all believe we will be able to go on doing black and white in some forms but that the day may come when color film will not be an option and if we want to photograph in color it will be digital or some kind of home project tri-color exposures on black and white or such. Maybe, maybe not. In the meantime enjoy what we have and right now the chemicals are still readily available.


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The film development industry is skewed by the fact that there is a lot of legacy, high volume equipment still around.

If demand remains, new or updated old equipment oriented toward a lower volume will be available. The chemicals have already been developed for them (e.g, LORR).

I feel relieved after reading this that the lab I've used for the last 25 years, One Vision in Coventry, are thriving.

Put it this way. All of us are individually going extinct too, so might as well do what you want while you can. I like film. And as long as I can
remember, some favorite film or paper disappeared from the market, and I had to learn something new. Maybe all color film will disappear
someday. Maybe a nuclear war will happen and nobody will worry about something like that, while the survivors learn to draw on cave walls again. I pretty sure than any form of digital imaging technology, as we currently know it, will change numerous times before film is seriously extinct. I'm reburbishing yet another 8x10 color enlarger. It will likely work well for another hundred years, long after I need it. Most digital cameras, scanners, and printers are landfill within just a few years. They kind of thing is self-obsolescent for a reason ($$).

Black Dog said:

I feel relieved after reading this that the lab I've used for the last 25 years, One Vision in Coventry, are thriving.

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not to shake you here, but my lab had seen a giant upswing in volume and their wait times were slowly increasing. No matter which employee I talked to they all said they were experiencing greater and greater volumes. Then their processor broke and they couldn't get parts for it. They have it jerry rigged to work for now and are scouring around looking for second hand machines. It's not so much about how well the business is doing, it's about aging legacy equipment and being unable to get parts to maintain it.

There are so many damn big processors available right now for next to nothing, or actually nothing if you are willing to pick them up, that
it would seem to be the least concern. Lab maintenance has always realistically required someone in-house that knows how to fix things and improvise if needed. Sure, in the glory days of commercial labs you could sign maintenance contracts, which were sometimes outright required as part of the purchase. But I also know labs that went broke when they made that service call, and nobody at the other end was
responsive. For the same reason, you don't go out buying an exotic imported car or vintage motorcyle without some Plan B how to fix it.
At least a lot of this stuff was partially mechanical and CAN be fixed. My attitude is, the simpler the better. Too many bells n' whistles is
just looking for trouble.

Especially for B/W the chemicals aren't that toxic or complicated to do basic work, even if you had to make your own emulsions. In fact, Vit C and Washing Soda and gelatin are at the grocer's. Fixer and a few other items you might have to send out for.

Color, I can't imagine coating color film or paper (yet!), but if you had the film and paper, the chemicals are not that complex from what I've seen of their structures. They are much less complex than most pharmaceuticals and do not require heroic temperatures or pressures to make (like some of my favorite pigments). The structures are known, the process for making the chemicals is known. You could get a batch processing contract labto make them for you. Costly, yes, but it might be something that a shop catering to enough of us could pull off i.e. Photographer's Formulary or Freestyle or Art Craft. The expensive part was figuring all this out in the first place.

Real pigments on the other hand, could be a real bear to bring back to market for the arts community if the "real" customers drop demand to the point where they are not produced because many require v. high temps and pressures with exquisite controls to produce. Real customers being house paints and the auto industry and similar. These pigments could be used to make 3 or 4 color photo prints by layering up Carbon printing or gum bichromate etc.

The all-analog color separation negatives might be a real bear. My current best thought is to make an E-6 slide to enlarge/contact print onto B/W pan film through cutting filters in the darkroom to avoid having to make 3 or 4 negatives in the field (or building a beam splitter camera or having stereo-like camera with 3 lenses/light paths in the camera). Most (?all?) people making these 3 or 4 color separations are either doing it entirely non "apug" or with film scans.

it will come down to how badly you want to do a particular kind of photography and what your budget is.

Me, I'm increasingly drawn to processes for printing that don't require expensive atoms (Pt, Pd, Ag, Au) but depend on rather less expensive atoms like Fe and Cr and involving computers less than more in my art.

another thought: I asked at Walmart in S.Central PA about film processing and they send it out and you get digital files and prints back, but not your negatives! The negatives are the real deal. I don't use them. I'm blessed to have a great photo store that still does c41 in house. They used to have a much much large photo finishing business for the Harrisburg PA region, no more. They have been talking about doing more batches of processing lately. Parts for such machines are doubtless an issue.

So, my local London Drugs is still doing 1 hour C41 processing and prints in, you guessed it, one hour. They must be busy, as I'm always lined up to drop off or pick up. This is in Calgary.


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The guy at the 8th St London Drugs told me both the c41 and e6 machines are kept busy, which both pleased and concerned me.

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Ronald Moravec said:

You will have to develop your own IF you can get the chemicals. BIG IF.

I recommend a digital camera and learn to process for tone curve to make it look like film rather than flat digital. Off topic to go into it here.

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Stupid comment. Digital does not and never will look like film.

Ronald Moravec said:

You will have to develop your own IF you can get the chemicals. BIG IF.

I recommend a digital camera and learn to process for tone curve to make it look like film rather than flat digital. Off topic to go into it here.

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Where is no IF to get chemicals. And where is no film in digital. Might be IF you are blind.

I really don't know why people who go around claiming everything we do is doomed even bother logging into APUG. I thought this forum was
dedicated to people doing things in the darkroom, or intending to, and sharing aspects of it. Yeah things change. Horses were made obsolete once motorized vehicles became standard. But millions of people still own horses and like riding them. People said painting was doomed once photography was invented, but every sizable city today has numerous art stores selling canvas and pigments etc. If you simply have to be
paranoid about something, worry about some idiot on the freeway rear-ending you because he's editing photos on his laptop while driving.

People talk about the wheather each day and still cannot avoid it. Why may we not talk about certain reductions in the industry and still go photographing?

DREW WILEY said:

I really don't know why people who go around claiming everything we do is doomed even bother logging into APUG. I thought this forum was
dedicated to people doing things in the darkroom, or intending to, and sharing aspects of it. Yeah things change. Horses were made obsolete once motorized vehicles became standard. But millions of people still own horses and like riding them. People said painting was doomed once photography was invented, but every sizable city today has numerous art stores selling canvas and pigments etc. If you simply have to be
paranoid about something, worry about some idiot on the freeway rear-ending you because he's editing photos on his laptop while driving.

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Two sides of the coin:

1. Acrylics have not 'obsoleted' oils, it is an alternative; digital has not 'obsoleted' film, it is an alternative.
2. in the world of color transparency, E-6 obsoleted E-4, and in color neg C-41 obsoleted C-22

But OTOH

• Cyanotype and Dauggerotypes are virtually totally displaced by silver halide based photography
• Dye transfer color printing materials ceased to be produced over 20 years ago, but a few master darkroom printers kept the Gold Standard of color print process alive; now even they have stopped, for lack of materials; it has become anachronistic
• Kodachrome and Cibachrome chemistry and film/paper is no longer produced and therefore anachronistic in photography.
• More and more color transparency emulsions are anachronistic in photography, even while the chemistry to process them (E-6) is still available

So the issue isn't 'obsolescence', the issue is the non-availability and the passage of time which renders chemical processes as unavailable, even if a market exists for their continuity! That almost happened with instant photographic materials from Polaroid, until a small venture formed to try to revive the availability of the Polaroid products. OTOH nobody revived Kodachrome or Cibchrome chemistry and processes. And continued need for a color faithful transparency emulsion did not stop EPN from vanishing. Therein lies the 'doom', not via obsolescence! What if oils and acrylics ceased to be made, leaving only water based paint...wouldn't you lament about the lack of materials, and not blame 'obsolescence' ?!

DREW WILEY said:

I really don't know why people who go around claiming everything we do is doomed even bother logging into APUG. .

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I blame the usual post New Year hangover and the fall in the Chinese stockmarket


pentaxuser