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

[Certain Exposures]

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.

 

[BrianShaw]

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

 

[Certain Exposures]

If.

 

[MattKing]

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

 

[mshchem]

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.

 

[gbroadbridge]

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

 

[RalphLambrecht]

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.

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.

 

[IpseLux]

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!

 

[koraks]

few if any labs do real chemistry nowadays

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.

 

[IpseLux]

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.

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.

 

[koraks]

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.

 

[MattKing]

The scan and print digitally workflow can lead to superb results. I have many excellent large colour enlargements from that workflow - some of them printed at Costco discount prices (when they did that)!
Just as it can result in garbage.
The same applies to optical prints.
I've seen lots of garbage from both approaches over the decades.
The quality of the results from a lab depends on the people working there, the volumes that customers are bringing to them, the requirements of those customers, and to a certain extent, the prices that those customers are willing to pay.

 

[Paul Howell]

On the rare occasion that I shoot color I have it processed and printed by a local lab. The 2 labs near me are high volume and maintain the minlabs and film processors chemistry so I have good results. Not to say that next time it will be crap. If you have concerns about a local lab you can send to larger processor such as Blue Moon.

 

[Certain Exposures]

Thanks everyone. As usual, I read all comments. I chuckled at a few.

@BrianShaw I hope you did not take my 'If.' comment seriously. I was feeling morose.

@MattKing @gbroadbridge @koraks @IpseLux (and anyone else really) what do you think of the colors in my scans in my last two posts here:

- Sample 1: https://www.photrio.com/forum/threa...er-do-you-have-spare-ones.201944/post-2849760

- Sample 2: https://www.photrio.com/forum/threa...er-do-you-have-spare-ones.201944/post-2956069

I developed and scanned those myself.

I have not tried printing color in the darkroom yet. I want to, eventually.

I am unsure about how to evaluate a lab's C-41 processing quality aside from the obvious like blank negatives, fingerprints, etc. I scan so will I really ever know if they are doing C-41 better than me? Based on Matt's anecdote, they probably are.

I sent them Fuji 400 to see if they get the same weird marks I described as a final sanity check. However, the rolls were from a different box I purchased around the same time. Same store, though.

 

[Certain Exposures]

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.

Yes, I will continue to do my own black and white. My precious (ha ha).

 

[MattKing]

@MattKing @gbroadbridge @koraks @IpseLux (and anyone else really) what do you think of the colors in my scans in my last two posts here:

- Sample 1: https://www.photrio.com/forum/threa...er-do-you-have-spare-ones.201944/post-2849760

- Sample 2: https://www.photrio.com/forum/threa...er-do-you-have-spare-ones.201944/post-2956069

With respect to anything coming via shared internet posting, I'm always careful to caution that there are a lot of variables in between your film and/or scan and what I see on my screen, so take the following with a grain of salt.
With respect to Sample 2, I tried a quick and dirty tweak and ended up with this TWEAKED BY ME version:

Compare this with a direct screen grab from your ORIGINAL post:

Primarily, I see a lot more green tending toward cyan in the original screen grab.
Also the tweaked Gamma in my example looks more pleasing to me.
But remember, there are a lot of things hsppening between what you started with and my screen.
And one further comment about the example - there may be some mixed light sources involved - particularly with respect to the bright background. If the illumination of one part of your subject is light of one colour, while other parts are illuminated by light of another colour, it is difficult to choose a pleasing colour balance. We used to run into this regularly with outdoor weddings - the lit by sky and sun parts of the bride's outfit were one colour, while the shaded parts of the bride's outfit were distinctly green, due to the light reflecting off of thegrassy lawn they were standing on.
That is an example of a form of "crossover" that we tend to find acceptable, because it matches our experience with the world we see.
The forms of crossover encountered due to developing errors - e.g. magenta highlights and green shadows in the image, while your subject was evenly lit with good quality, full spectrum light - is more difficult to deal with, although the tools available with digital post-processing tools make it far more practical to deal with it than the tools available to the optical printer.

 

[koraks]

what do you think of the colors in my scans in my last two posts here:

The first (woman leaning against bench) is on the yellow side to my taste, but it's late afternoon light, so it's kind of plausible.
The second looks OK to me; a little dark, also on the warm side, but I gather this is your preference and that's fine.

Btw, I think the question is really what you think of the colors and whether you're happy with them - that's what counts!

I scan so will I really ever know if they are doing C-41 better than me?

Not necessarily, no. The problems people report with labs are invariably gross issues like the ones you mentioned - i.e. very clear damage etc. And those are relatively rare, of course. Subtle color differences are barely discussed because they're always difficult to spot and if there's a color difference between lab-processed and DIY-processed negatives, the question always remains which set is the 'right' one.

You know, as time goes by, I'm leaning increasingly into the direction of "forget about what's objectively correct, if it works for you, it's fine."

 

[IpseLux]

Thanks everyone. As usual, I read all comments. I chuckled at a few.

@BrianShaw I hope you did not take my 'If.' comment seriously. I was feeling morose.

@MattKing @gbroadbridge @koraks @IpseLux (and anyone else really) what do you think of the colors in my scans in my last two posts here:

- Sample 1: https://www.photrio.com/forum/threa...er-do-you-have-spare-ones.201944/post-2849760

- Sample 2: https://www.photrio.com/forum/threa...er-do-you-have-spare-ones.201944/post-2956069

I developed and scanned those myself.

I have not tried printing color in the darkroom yet. I want to, eventually.

I am unsure about how to evaluate a lab's C-41 processing quality aside from the obvious like blank negatives, fingerprints, etc. I scan so will I really ever know if they are doing C-41 better than me? Based on Matt's anecdote, they probably are.

I sent them Fuji 400 to see if they get the same weird marks I described as a final sanity check. However, the rolls were from a different box I purchased around the same time. Same store, though.

Is there a way to tell if they are doing a good job? Color lab work is pretty difficult. Chemicals have to be precisely at temperature. They are far more finicky than monochromatic chems.
But filtration is super sensitive too. You may be too young to have experience trying to get a color TV adjusted when it was out of color whack? It’s a bit like that. And to adjust it, we used color correction gels to get us close. Look at the image thru one, and if it corrects it adequately, give it a try.
My prints often turned out super boosted, overly saturated and looking like ViewMaster slides, which was fine with me. It’s worth learning. And it is doable. But it requires a definite learning curve.
As to a good lab. Prints should look as clean, fresh, clear and sharp and vibrant as slides. They should pop.
I always asked for glossy paper, to me it is sharper, and white borders, to make sure my image whites were always 1 zone darker, and not overexposed.
A slight color shift is ok, as long as your skin tones are acceptable to you.
Enjoy your prints.
If the images fall short, use them as learning blocks. The next ones will be better.
Kind regards!

 

[BurntOutElectronics]

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

A local place for you would be Rewind, control strips ran twice per day. You'll be fine

 

[eli griggs]

Having a piece of hard candy and reading this thread makes me sad for the days we had both a good e6 and colour negative shop about uptown in Charlotte with people who loved the product they put out hourly.

I miss those people and what they brought to the quality of our lives.

 

[foc]

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.

I can understand the feeling.

Here is my own personal checklist for using a lab for the first time. It may be of help to you.

• If a mail-order lab, how was the returned negatives packaged and presented?
• Were they in a boardback envelope?
• Were the negatives sleeved?
• Were the sleeved negatives loose in the envelope or in a print wallet/negative holder?
• Examine the negatives out of the sleeve, are they clean and fingerprint/mark free?
• Are the negatives cut equally distant between the frames?
• Is the cut clean?
• Is the twin-check (usually a small silver label with numbers) a straight 90 degrees to the film edges?

Personally, I find the devil is in the detail. Sloppy presentation of returned negatives would suggest sloppy processing procedures.

If you can visit a lab and ask to see the equipment, are they clean and chemical stain free? If not, I would avoid. Good housekeeping in a lab costs nothing but makes a big difference to quality control ethics. It goes without saying that the lab should be doing a daily control strip.

Brand and type of equipment should make no difference to C41 processing. A lab is usually only as good as its owner/staff/operators.