Commercial Developing

Circa 1970.....say (if you are in the usa) you took your family to Disneyland, and had Color Film (or black & white) in your camera......Then you took it for Developing at your typical Drugstore/Grocery Store scenario of that time.....What kind of paper would the lab have used.?
I assume Variable Contrast papers of that time were not yet very good.?
Especially if it were Roll-Film, and the lab would have to develop the whole roll at one exposure, what was the procedure, for printing pictures for the public, in 1970.?
Was it automated very much, or was it pretty labor intensive.?
If there are any links that get into this, i would be more than happy to do the reading.
Thank You

I remember that the drugstore b&w prints were pretty terrible, well exposed but the contrast was awful. I can only assume exposure was automated and a low contrast paper was used.
Color negative wasn't a lot better. That's why custom labs were a big thing. It's also one reason home dark rooms were popular. Slides were great, mostly they didn't get screwed up. We had Kodachrome!

The drug store probably farmed out the color to a large commercial processor. B&W night be developed locally. As demand for film began to fall off in the 70's so did the quality of the developing. I have some B&W that is excellent but processed before 1970.

Wow...were Film Sales already going down hill in the 1970's.
I did not even start until circa 1977.....

My experience was working at a commercial lab processing holiday snapshots in 1969 in Bristol in the UK. I was only a lowly gofer but I observed with interest. The BW printing was done while the neg was uncut, the machines were semi-automated and loaded with a long roll of 4inch wide paper to make 4x6 prints, exposure was automatic but each frame was viewed by the operator who could make exposure adjustments manually by inspection of the neg, I'm not sure, but I think it unlikely variable contrast paper was used. When the paper roll was finished it was loaded into an automatic processor, the paper emerged from the wash through a slit in the darkroom wall and was squeegeed of excess water then fed around the heated polished drum of the glazer (one of my jobs was to stand by the glazer and keep the polished surface clean as it turned) this put a full gloss surface onto the prints. The roll was then cut into 4x6 prints on a little hand guillotine and the prints and the negs were also cut into single frames, the negs and prints were matched up with the retailer's order. At the end of the day the finished jobs were loaded into bags, one for each retailer, for delivery next morning.

Color was processed in a similar fashion but obviously with different paper and chemistry. Regarding variable contrast paper for color it was not used, in fact I believe there is still to this day no variable contrast color paper.

Film was booming in the mid-seventies and onward into the nineties, especially colour neg which became dirt cheap and available everywhere. This was given a huge boost with the introduction of one-hour labs which popped up everywhere. Apart from Kodachrome, a wide choice of E6 slide films from Kodak, Agfa and Fuji was also readily available. Home processing and printing was a popular hobby. Colour developing and printing in particular was getting a lot of attention in the seventies and eighties, especially with Photocolor II (in the UK and elsewhere, not in the US), Unicolor and Tetenal kits. Cibachrome-A was also introduced with a lot of fanfare and those who could afford it, jumped at it. Pro labs were common in the larger cities and provided higher quality and more specialised services than the mini-labs. So film was everywhere, and getting it processed and printed was no problem whatsoever, with a range of services available at various price points and quality levels.

In the 1970s I worked at a number of retail camera stores. They all used off-site labs.
I also worked as a professional photographer, and had colour work developed and printed by a professional lab. Except when I was myself working in such a lab, when I did my own colour printing.
I also did my own black and white developing and printing.
Somehow I also found time to finish one university degree and start another .
During that time, film and photography was booming. Many people used slide and/or movie film, but even more took colour pictures on colour print film. Colour print photography became even more active at the end of that decade when one hour processing became prevalent.
The results I received from the pro lab were great, but I also saw lots of good results from the amateur labs - lots of happy customers.
There wasn't much black and white going through the amateur labs though. Most people were either shooting colour, or doing their own black and white. There were a couple of professional black and white labs in town, but I didn't use them.
I knew people who were doing colour at home, but didn't do that myself, as I always was either working in a lab or had a lab available.

I remember hanging out at Times Camera in Cedar Rapids Iowa in the mid 70's. No in house printing. There was cheaper regional labs, but I always sent my Ektacolor S to Kodak's Lab in Chicago. Phenomenal prints it was automated but there must have been an operator that was involved, no way a 1970s era robot could make prints that good. Late 70's local labs started popping up.
My Dad shot roll film 6x9 folders in the 40's, most of that was printed with a semiautomatic contact printer locally. Kodak single weight, deckle edge glossy prints. Developed in huge trays or something like a Pako "doper" which were just huge rocking baths for developing and fixing. Around here in the mid 20th century it was usually a drug store.
We are lucky to still have 2 camera shops in the area that do outstanding photo finishing, C-41 daily.
I remember the pros used Meisel Color labs in Dallas TX. They are still around but only huge graphics arts work.

Around 1970 B&W Roll head printers used fixed grade paper, contrast was controlled by flashing results were often not that brilliant. This was a period of change and sales of B&W consumer films were dropping as Colour took over for the general D&P market.

I'd echo Gerald Koch's comments, my fathers older B&W 1950's/early 60's prints are better than my mothers late 1960's/very early 70's then she switched like most people to colour films. My parents films went through our pharmacy (drug store) to an external lab that wasn't near our town.

Ian

afriman said:

Film was booming in the mid-seventies and onward into the nineties, especially colour neg which became dirt cheap and available everywhere.

Click to expand...

The peak of film sales was about the year 2000, not earlier.

AgX said:

The peak of film sales was about the year 2000, not earlier.

Click to expand...

I totally agree. My point was simply that, far from dwindling in the seventies, film sales at the time were healthy, photography was a very popular hobby and the industry was extremely competitive. The numerous photographic magazines from that period, jam-packed with advertisements for equipment, film, darkroom stuff and d&p services, attest to this fact. When film sales indeed peeked around 2000, that was largely because of the way colour negative film had become popular with general consumers, more so than among serious hobbyists.

Film became ubiquitous at least with types 126 and 110. From then on it went up further.