...But it did. I did my first B&W processing in 17 years the other day. The negatives came out perfect and dead-clean. I had recently tried two camera stores in my city, the first one the negatives came out filthy, spotted, and dusty which required considerable clean-up after scanning. The second, they were scratched across half the roll! But it was easy and the processing from both only cost $4.00. But I can't go back if I want decent results now.
Too bad you'll have to do your own processing now ;-)
I can add to your horror stories about getting film processed in camera stores. Getting traditional silver halide film processed is much dearer here than at your place and takes more than a week. The local camera store has a Agfa minilab and will process C-41 b&w film, but they managed to fog it, probably to bring out the scratches better.
...But it did. I did my first B&W processing in 17 years the other day. The negatives came out perfect and dead-clean. I had recently tried two camera stores in my city, the first one the negatives came out filthy, spotted, and dusty which required considerable clean-up after scanning. The second, they were scratched across half the roll! But it was easy and the processing from both only cost $4.00. But I can't go back if I want decent results now.
Film processing is certainly so easy, especially if you use a divided developer! With a changing bag, you don't even need a darkroom. To turn over your latent images to who knows what soup with who knows what fool running it is not good as you've found out. Maybe a real pro lab, but nothing less than that.