How were film developed/printed for customers prior to mini labs?

[Photo Engineer]

Back in England in the decades post WW2 one of the ways it worked was for an urban processing lab to send out a small van on a collection run to pickup negs for processing and printing back at the lab, and at the same time drop off customer orders that been completed. The same route was followed on a schedule so that you knew if your film was dropped off say on a Thursday the prints would be back on Tuesday and so on. For summer work while at school I was hired by a lab in Bristol to assist in the black and white lab while the summer rush was in progress. Orders were brought in from all over the city by the lab vans and finished work sent out the same way. It was necessary to match up the customer paper order and the customer roll of exposed film at the completion of film processing so that printing instructions could be fulfilled, and when that was finished the completed order was sent back to the correct retailer with the correct ticket on it for collection by the customer. But mix-ups happened from time to time and then it was the devil of a job to retrace everything and try to put it right!

Pretty much the same here where I grew up in the suburbs of Pittsburgh. We sent out two runs each day to pick up and deliver color and B&W from drug stores and photo stores. The B&W was all done on-site and the color was sent to Kodak on a regular schedule.

We had 2 B&W printers, a Kodak model III and a model IV for doing roll film and we had a film and paper processor made by Pako. There was also one Pako print dryer. The film was dried using an IR rack at the end of the processing machine. There were several enlargers each one set up for a given size sheet film, and there was a Pako sheet print processor. It was basically a rocker table with trays and a chain driven basket to move the prints. We even did some color prints in it but decided it was not too cost effective.

Processes were run in the AM and printed and sorted. Deliveries started after lunch while more processing went on. This small business was in a thriving neighborhood, but is now an empty lot.

I worked in this from about 1955 to 1959.

At Kodak, the color print processing was fully automated and the yellow bags went by faster than you could imagine. That area along with the sorting took place in front of a glass window in the EK building on West Ridge Road in Rochester. It was on the corner of Dewey and Ridge for those wishing to look it up, but today there is just an empty lot and a restaurant.

PE

 

[Jim Jones]

The local pro photographer also developed and printed for anyone in the late 1940s. We would drop the film rolls off in his shop, and he would mail negs and prints to us. By the 50s I was using Kodachrome, which came with a mailer and a list of Kodak processing labs. I eventually had a rubber stamp made up that read "925 Page Mill road, Palo Alto, CA," to save the tedium of carefully printing it on the tag on those little mailers.

 

[Chrismat]

My first camera back in the mid-70s was a Polaroid Super Shooter so I didn't have to wait, but when I got into 35mm, I would take my color film to a drugstore and wait almost a week for the pictures. I grew up in Northern Maine and I think most of the film was sent to the Portland area. In the 80s the service was faster, only a day or two wait.

There is a video on Youtube that is a few years old, but it is pretty funny. It's today's kids reacting to film cameras. What's funny is a reaction a girl has when told she would have to wait an hour for the photos (4:21). I wonder what she would think on having to wait for days!

 

[markjwyatt]

My first camera back in the mid-70s was a Polaroid Super Shooter so I didn't have to wait, but when I got into 35mm, I would take my color film to a drugstore and wait almost a week for the pictures. I grew up in Northern Maine and I think most of the film was sent to the Portland area. In the 80s the service was faster, only a day or two wait.

There is a video on Youtube that is a few years old, but it is pretty funny. It's today's kids reacting to film cameras. What's funny is a reaction a girl has when told she would have to wait an hour for the photos (4:21). I wonder what she would think on having to wait for days!

I bet you could have changed some of the votes at the end if they showed them some cool old cameras (SLRs, rangefinders, TLRs, a Speed Graphic, folders, etc.), some actual pictures, and some negatives and slides.

 

[jvo]

it was magic - still is...

 

[Paul Howell]

The small studio I worked while in high school would develop B&W on site, for color most would drop their film off at a drug store, it took 3 or 4 days for turn around. While in college we toured a color processing plant. As noted, large, really big machines. 35mm was spliced together for printing in a auto machine, don't recall the brand. Enlargements were done on Omega enlargers. On the other end processing was the custom house. The lab I used did everything by hand, from film processing to printing, cost 3 times what the drug store charged, he did b&W, color print and slide film up to 8X10. .

 

[russell_w_b]

At the chemist's, down the road. He sold film and developed it. I'd go in as a ten-year-old with the 127 film out of my Brownie, all eight shots used up, and was told to 'come back in three days' or so.

When I was in Penrith recently (another small English market town) I was in the chemist's asking for some 300ml amber bottles. 'What for?' he asked. I told him they were to store developer and fixer in.

'Oh... We used to develop films here in this shop. Upstairs, until very recently were two large amber Winchester bottles marked 'Developer A' and 'Developer B'.'

I take it from this combination of potions and longevity they were using Diafine to do everyone's B&W films in. I think the colour ones got sent away.

 

[blockend]

it was magic - still is...

Agreed. My mother was a late adopter of 126 Instamatic film, and ran a box camera into the late 1960s. Dire warnings about not opening the box lent the object an occult aspect in my eyes. This was mixed up with seeing an old Brownie store promotion with pixies and elves. It was all very confusing and mysterious, and consequently exciting. Our local chemist loaded and unloaded film for amateur customers.