Kodak Ektar 100 and where to get processed?

mgb74 said:

Pro labs in Mpls have been dropping like flies.

National Camera does c41 35mm in house, I believe everything else goes to Universal. West does C41 35mm in house, don't know about 120.

I haven't used Universal very much recently (maybe 1-2 rolls of E6 in the last year), but I'd be comfortable using them. I think they do enough volume to keep fresh, but no so much that they lose sight of what they're doing.

I think Mpls Photo Center may do C41 too.

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Last I knew Mpls Photo Center is only processing B&W and dropped C41 for some reason. They were probably the last place to do C-41 dip & dunk.

I skip National Camera and go straight to Universal Color for my processing. They're great to work with, and the quality is excellent. They're the only place for E-6, aside from going to St.Cloud. They just can't do a C-41 push, and I've been unimpressed with their scanning (even the larger file size is small to me.)

As for Ektar; It's a great film if you don't mind colour inaccuracy. I mean, it has great punchy semi-retro colours, but it's been very temperamental to me. I cannot trust that film to give repeatable results and I've stopped using it.

If you are looking for a photo lab search my Dead Link Removed. Having said that, most labs will do a good job with Ektar because it is so scanable. Even my horrible local riteaid will do good work with it

Ektar is a very predicatable, reliable, and accurate film if you understand it. It is obviously not a low
saturation muddied-up film engineered to minimize flesh-tone blemishes. Color inaccuracies in the shadows can be corrected using simple color-balancing filtration just like in a studio using a color temp meter. If the scene contains mixed lighting, some of it in open sun and some in deep shade, well then you'll get an
inevitable mixed result. Scanning small format Ektar negatives requires more finesse than large ones because you're sampling size in smaller, and in general, there is the risk of portions of the three respective
dye curves being unequally represented - in effect, you're changing the perceived shape of the curve in
one way or another. This isn't the fault of the film but an side effect of a less than ideal scan. I print optically, directly from the negative, so this is not an issue, and I can see the real characteristics of the
film without this kind of bias. However, a contrast-up or contrast-down unsharp mask can be used to offset saturation issues per magnification, and significantly, these will also affect color balance by controlling the skew of the respective curve. It's a little more involved than I can explain here, but just
part of "psychoanalyzing" any new film.

I shoot at box speed and send to Reedy photo lab in St Pete Fl. they excell at 120. Be certain to tell them how you want it processed, cut or rolled up andif you want proofs and or scans and at what resolution. They are wonderful with 120 and 35mm. Used them for years.

Lee

bblhed said:

Maybe you are lucky enough to have a good scanner that shipped with nice software, I am not. I have software that can correct the color as well, but if I have it scanned by a lab I don't have to correct it at all. I don't bother any more, even for 35mm if I want Ektar scanned I have the lab do it. I have no problems with any other film but Ektar. I believed this was a user or software problem, I even tried using Viewscan and still had to adjust after scanning, now I just let the people with the $30,000 scanner do it. I like my Canoscan 8800f, but it does not scan Ektar 100 well, Portra, Gold, B&W of all sorts work fine so I know it is not me, it is something to do with the way Ektar and my scanner interact. If it was me all my scans would need heavy correction, they do not.

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I use a V500 with Epson Scan software. I use the colour balance tool, though typically I reset all corrections and expand levels to not clip any info and correct using levels and colour balance in Photoshop.. so that I dont have to rescan if I want to correct differently later, I can correct exactly the same in Epson scan.

VueScan is terrible. It isn't Ektar and your scanner, it's understanding colour and the basic methods of correction. You do not need fancy manipulation and profiles that can't be represented by a curve.

If I shoot colour neg in medium format now it is usually Ektar.
I get it processed by a local Kodak lab who have a 120 carrier for their minilab and scan it on a Epson V700.
I turn off all corrections and set it so no clipping happens and adjust colour balance and contrast in photoshop when I'm removing the couple of inevitable dust spots.
I am looking forward to printing it optically when I finally get my darkroom set up and get some colour stuff.
Until then I'll keep shooting it and scanning.

Not good news for Kodak again in the news. The WSJ had more updates on its future. Best stock up on Kodak film soon, diminishing film is a priority.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111903454504576488033424421882.html?KEYWORDS=Kodak

You may need to subscribe to read full story, i do not know fore sure, I read the paper every day.

Lee