I am using a lab again for the first time in years.

Today, I dropped off a few rolls of C-41 film at a lab for the first time in years. I felt like I was putting my child in the arms of a stranger.

That is all, really.

If it’s a good lab then it’s like sending your child to Sunday school. All will be better for the experience.

If.

A very long time ago I worked in a small lab doing printing for a number of professional photographers - predominantly wedding and portrait studios.
Our clients brought their developed film to us in uncut rolls or negatives with printing instructions.
I was mostly responsible for colour corrected proofs of the uncut rolls, and colour corrected machine enlargements of individual negatives.
The owner did most of the custom enlargements - really, really demanding, high quality custom enlargements - Rob was a fine photographer and a really good colour printer.
We had to "fire" one of our high volume client, because he was trying to use a Kreonite processor to do his own film development, in order to cut down his overhead.
Those negatives were absolutely awful - crossover like nothing I had ever seen before.
We let him back in when he agreed to provide proof of having a decent lab develop his films before they got to us.
I hope your lab is good, and that the resulting consistency of your negatives provides you peace and joy

I had two tremendous photo stores, PhotoPro in Cedar Rapids and University Camera in Iowa City, both did amazing work. The lab people at PhotoPro were as good as they come at hitting the mark in filtration.

Roger Christian at University Camera had a full service lab, he even had an E6 machine, black and white everything. He had a Fuji Frontier scanner really amazing setup. When he sold all the equipment I saw it loaded on the truck, sad day. It's OK as I still see Roger a couple times a month for lunch.

I struggle a little with current commercial labs these days, as I don't think they have sufficient volume to keep chemistry fresh.

And I wonder if they are running test strips at all or just expecting people to scan and correct gross errors in post.

Having said all that - in the golden days of film there were some smaller mall cut price operators who were skimping on all that too.

I'm sure they'll be fine

Certain Exposures said:

Today, I dropped off a few rolls of C-41 film at a lab for the first time in years. I felt like I was putting my child in the arms of a stranger.

That is all, really.

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I know the feeling. In my early years of photography, I was too afraid to develop my own film (too much could go wrong). Now, I wouldn't trust anyone to develop my film; I must do it myself.

I have a love/hate relationship with photo labs here in the US. Dropping film in Germany or even Guatemala was always great. The prints always looked like the very best they could. White borders, sharp, bright, like slides on paper. Germany was the best, contact sheets perfectly exposed, negatives properly sleeved, … everything done as well as I could have done.
And although good places exist in America, the norm is quite disappointing….
I just dropped a test roll at a local “pro” shop, and I was utterly disappointed. They did return the negatives, half assed sleeved.
Good there. Not great, but good.
But the prints? My goodness!!! What a disaster.
That dull, awful satin paper. Flat. Contrasty. They looked like they had been scanned with a flat bed scanner.
They probably were.
And hence the problem, imho: few if any labs do real chemistry nowadays. Everything is digitized. And as high resolution images eat a lot of computer memory, resolution goes down the tubes.
In the old days, if you wanted to make a profit in photography, you’d to factor in the errors and make the most of it. Tweak things a bit, generally overexposing print film a bit to get acceptable images.
You’d also had to frame to the often requested 5x7 and 8x10 sizes on your viewfinder to not get any necessary parts of your image chopped up! Frame wide.
Today? Well, I’m like you. Doing this for a first time in a long time, re-learning as I go along.
As I type this answer, I thought of my first attempt…. I’m gonna submit the same image to various reputable photo labs to see which one comes out best.
That’s an easy test. And one that could save thousands of dollars and countless headaches in the future.
I’m glad you are excited about your prints. I wish you the best with them.
Prints are where it’s at. That’s real photography as far as I’m concerned.
Kind regards CE!

IpseLux said:

few if any labs do real chemistry nowadays

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You'd pay $20 at the very least per print. There's virtually no market for it. It's just far too labor intensive, and if you're running a lab, try finding someone who will slave away their hours in the dark making prints for your customers all day. It's a non-starter.

But it doesn't matter anyway, because the question whether the prints will be good doesn't depend on whether they were made with an enlarger or from scans. Good or awful prints can be made either way. Most labs will make prints in such a way that no or minimal human intervention is required, because humans = expensive and consumers overall don't want to pay much for their prints.

koraks said:

You'd pay $20 at the very least per print. There's virtually no market for it. It's just far too labor intensive, and if you're running a lab, try finding someone who will slave away their hours in the dark making prints for your customers all day. It's a non-starter.

But it doesn't matter anyway, because the question whether the prints will be good doesn't depend on whether they were made with an enlarger or from scans. Good or awful prints can be made either way. Most labs will make prints in such a way that no or minimal human intervention is required, because humans = expensive and consumers overall don't want to pay much for their prints.

Click to expand...

Forgive me, for I have to laugh at your skating away and paying $20 a print for enlarger prints….
I lived an entire life with chemical processing, and can and have developed both monochrome and color in a lab. Challenging? Yes. A vocation? Absolutely, and not for everyone.
But there are many ways to make one’s living, I suppose.
Photography is an expensive art.
And yes, folks will pay for it.
Have you not seen the latest craze, these tiny Polaroid printers one can connect to the phone files?
What a terrific idea!
I understand there are a few labs in America still doing real printing.
I’ll be supporting them as much as I can.
Photography did not displace painting. I can’t imagine digital printers replacing good, solid darkroom work.
The darkroom is where half of photography happens anyway.
Unless slides are your thing.
And they are glorious too.

I'm commenting on the economic and business reality of a commercial lab. I print b&w and color in the darkroom as a hobby. That's a different story. It's not sensible to project the logic and economics of a hobby onto a commercial industry.