Lab Looking to let customers specify chemistry, what should we offer?

We're a small lab in Eau Claire, WI and we do a fair amount of mail-order developing, hand-processing half a dozen to a dozen rolls of black and white a week. We're looking to overhaul our film-ordering website and offer some premium development services that let customers decide how we develop their film. My idea is basically to let them fill out a web form that will let them select different chemistry, dev times, agitation instructions, and have a lot more direct input into the development process. At the moment we just use HC-110 and stick pretty close to the Massive Dev Chart.

So my question is what would be a nice group of developers to offer alongside our HC-110 that would give our customers some variety and work well with the most commonly used films. Should we look into a few other fixers as well? We have a few in stock but mostly use Arista Universal Fixer. There are a ton of considerations to take into account with this question, and there's no one right answer, but I figure the expertise and experience of this forum will offer some very useful perspectives.

Based on 'Hype' posts here and on other sites, you might get some interest in the following:
Pyro
Caffenol
Stand-Development
Rodinal equivalent
B&W Reversal

What sizes of film will you offer development for?
I'm an advocate of using developer in a replenishment regime. In particular, X-Tol.

Just 35mm and 120/220 for now, though if we had enough volume we might shell out for the equipment for 4x5 or larger. I think we'll probably be limited to one-shot chemistry. Is it practical to use a replenishment regime when hand-developing or using a machine like a Wing-Lynch or a Jobo? We're currently looking for a Wing-Lynch to use for standard black and white and E6, which we would like to start processing again.

Rodinal was already on the list, as was offering some stand developing(which I've been tinkering with a bit myself). B&W reversal is a cool idea as well, though I don't have any experience with it, is the reversal chemistry the same or related to reversal chemistry in the E6 process?

If you process in high volume, my guess is a developer that you can replenish will help the bottom line.

uh oh, i think i hear pandora's box opening !

my suggestion would be have a shelf or 2 or 4 of raw stock chemistry on hand
from coffee to tealeaves and HQ to catchetol .. and you tell them you will mix whatever it is
they want and do it as a single shot developer. you can charge either a flat fee,
or a percentage x the price of the stock chemistry + developing fee.

have fun !

I would offer either xtol, D 76, or HC 110 as standard, all give similar results, advantage of extol and D 76 is that both can be replenished and more economical than HC 110. I would use HC 110 for push processing, up to 2 stops, a staining developer, and then a fine grain like microdol X(sp?) and a acuity developer like Rodinal. You can also custom process for zone users. If you process 4X5 and larger then perhaps a classic developer like DK50? In terms of fixer, don't know if it matters, time wise a alkaline rapid fix like T4, saves time as you don't need to use a hypo clearing agent and still have a shot wash. As some point you just to run a spread sheet and put in costs so you can price out. As you state there are many options.

I like the idea but fear you might be opening yourself up to all sorts of customer grievance issues making so many options available. Are your customers asking for these options?

Replenished XTOL
Pyro

I think a staining developer (i.e. pyro) would be a good offering. If you get the version mixed in glycol the concentrate will last a very long time.
Xtol would be nice, as it offers slightly better speed than some of the usual suspects. Replenished would be good if you have the volume,but it works well diluted for one-shot too.
I would shy away from stand, but lots of people swear by it. But it seems like it would be risky for problems like bromide drag, and so could become a customer satisfaction problem.
D-76 is the standard for just about everything else, but it's redundant in a way, if you're doing HC110 and or xtol.
Then there is Rodinol.

I think one very valuable aspect of such a service would be for the folks who'd just like to see what their negatives are like processed in xyz developer or technique, without buying a bottle of whatever then not liking it.

bvy said:

I like the idea but fear you might be opening yourself up to all sorts of customer grievance issues making so many options available. Are your customers asking for these options?

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that is the box i was talking about !
and people who don't know what they
are asking for getting their prized film processed
using whatever it is they read online or in a blog or ?
and they get their film back it it isn't / wasn't what they expected
claiming you ruined their only negatives shot of aunt millie's 100th birthday party
or their moonrise-pepper or meeting with the president and his cabinet or ... ?

Brady Eklund said:

We're a small lab in Eau Claire, WI and we do a fair amount of mail-order developing, hand-processing half a dozen to a dozen rolls of black and white a week. We're looking to overhaul our film-ordering website and offer some premium development services that let customers decide how we develop their film.

Click to expand...

Perhaps you should offer reversal B/W development!!

Brady Eklund said:

My idea is basically to let them fill out a web form that will let them select different chemistry, dev times, agitation instructions, and have a lot more direct input into the development process. At the moment we just use HC-110 and stick pretty close to the Massive Dev Chart.

Click to expand...

I'd guess the following developers must be there:
- Rodinal (or equivalent)
- the industry standard D76 (or ID11)
- a high tech general purpose developer like Xtol
- a developer for push processing like Ilford Microphen
- an extra-fine-grain developer like Ilford Perceptol

Brady Eklund said:

Should we look into a few other fixers as well?

Click to expand...

As far as I know, fixer shouldn't change the image or the image quality in any way, as long as it works.

With you only processing a dozen films per week I wonder how you will stay profitable by offfering even a choice of processing options.
You would have to increase your number of processed films substantially.
Maybe your idea is to achieve this just with those new offers.

I would offer a fine grain (Perceptol), a fast general use (maybe HC110) and a speed-enhancing developer (Microphen). And Rodinal.

Consider Diafine...
It's a high-acutance ultra-fine-grain two-part developer yielding full box speed at any temp from 70-85°F.
Develop for 5 minutes in each solution regardless of temperature*.
Time does not change at all from one film type to another.

Do not use a pre-wash. Diafine gets replenished by simply replacing the lost volume with fresh developer.
The working solutions and the portions held back in separate bottles as "replenisher" both have almost infinite shelf life.

The absolute consistency for all films and the long shelf life make it a good choice for infrequent use.
=====
Rodinal (already mentioned) is also excellent. Offer 1:25 and1:50 dilutions (and perhaps 1:100).
Used as a one-shot, the concentrate lasts forever (literally decades) even after opening.

- Leigh

*NB: stop bath and fixer should be at the same temp as the developer.

Please check out Ilford Ilfotec DD-X developer. It's a beautiful developer and works great with any B&W film.
It's also the mean developer of my local professional lab overhere in Holland.

If you wan't to offer something special, please try reverse deeveloping B&w film (slides).

pyro-hd
beutler or rodinal

AgX said:

With you only processing a dozen films per week I wonder how you will stay profitable by offfering even a choice of processing options.
You would have to increase your number of processed films substantially.
Maybe your idea is to achieve this just with those new offers.

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I think the OP is trying is to increase the amount to make it profitable.

I considered a mail order processing option for film process at my lab, and basically figured there were more hassles than it was worth. If we did not have such
a problem (probably getting worse) crossing product across the border I would consider it.

My advice FWIW would be two developers , one stop, one fix. KISS If you are doing Jobo one shot, or even replenished your time has to be worth more than one roll at a time.

Brady Eklund said:

We're a small lab in Eau Claire, WI and we do a fair amount of mail-order developing, hand-processing half a dozen to a dozen rolls of black and white a week.

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Hi, I was ready to offer some cautions, on the assumption that a dozen rolls per week was ALL you did. But after looking some things up I see that you you already have a variety of processing services in a mall location, so apparently much more experience and business than one might have assumed.

My personal opinion, with plenty of experience in processing, especially high volume, is that hand processing ought to be avoided in commercial work as it is so labor intensive and it depends on an individual operator to not make mistakes. But if you have already decided to keep this up, I'd suggest that you ask your existing customers - as they fill out orders, offer a survey. For the economics I think HC-110 is hard to beat as it virtually never goes bad; with almost anything else you would ideally add a clip test or some sort of added labor costs in screening the mixes. If you step away from HC-110 you might need to add a QC step in order to assure the occasional unhappy customer that the actual processing was up to spec.

Personally, I would want to see Xtol available, but I am not the sort of person who would be sending B&W film out for processing.

Mr Bill said:

For the economics I think HC-110 is hard to beat as it virtually never goes bad; with almost anything else you would ideally add a clip test or some sort of added labor costs in screening the mixes.

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You obviously failed to read my previous post.

- Leigh

The lab I used in China when I lived there offered these options:

D76, D96, HC110, Adonal, Xtol, TMAX, and DD-X.

Mr Bill said:

For the economics I think HC-110 is hard to beat as it virtually never goes bad; with almost anything else you would ideally add a clip test or some sort of added labor costs in screening the mixes.

Click to expand...

Leigh B said:

You obviously failed to read my previous post.

- Leigh

Click to expand...

I'm sorry, I didn't see that you mentioned HC-110 in your post.

Thanks for the responses. We do quite a bit of C-41 through our mail-in business, probably averaging something like a dozen rolls a day, nation-wide online print service, retail portrait studio, ink-jet, dye-sub, UV, and Latex printing, sell cameras and accessories, and probably half a dozen other things I'm forgetting. Diversification was the key to surviving the digital revolution, diversification and relatively low costs of labor and overhead due to our location in the Midwest. Many of our employees really love film photography, and we want to do our part to keep it a viable option for our customers. We figure if we expand our offerings - E6, this custom processing idea, digital uploading, etc... We can attract more serious photographers who are shooting with film. People don't want to work with one lab for their E6, another for C41, another for B&W. We get a fair amount of professional work already, but a lot of our mail in business is the whole "I found these undeveloped rolls in my dead grandma's dresser" market. There are only so many old rolls sitting around undeveloped, and it's way more satisfying to process well-exposed shots of models than 20-year expired underexposed high-school basketball photos. The idea is to continue offering our competitive price on standard black and white developing, and then offer this custom service at a premium, while still coming in well below labs like RockyMountain. One attraction of the web-form would be the ability to easily build in costs of materials into pricing in a dynamic way, so probably flat-fee + costs * margin.

Dealing with customer expectations has crossed my mind. It's going to be necessary to put a big disclaimer in flashing red letters "YOU MIGHT NOT GET THE RESULTS YOU EXPECT, USE THIS FORM AT YOUR OWN RISK!!!", and even then there will inevitably be some issues. I'm not sure how many of you have worked in labs before, but those kinds of issues are nothing new for us. Even a perfect lab would have to deal with customers being upset due to their own ignorance.

There's enough of a market out there for our film processing operations to be self-sustaining, but for us to retain a big enough chunk of that market we're going to have to offer as comprehensive a level of service as possible, while keeping operations at an appropriate size and cost for our volume. As it is we aren't really making much if anything from the black and white processing we're doing. This kind of offering will cost at most a couple hundred dollars for the chemistry and a couple hundred more for my time setting up the online system and we have the potential to grow our customer base and get a higher margin on a subset of our orders. Plus the employees get to play around with a variety of new chemical toys!

Mr Bill said:

Hi, I was ready to offer some cautions, on the assumption that a dozen rolls per week was ALL you did. But after looking some things up I see that you you already have a variety of processing services in a mall location, so apparently much more experience and business than one might have assumed.

My personal opinion, with plenty of experience in processing, especially high volume, is that hand processing ought to be avoided in commercial work as it is so labor intensive and it depends on an individual operator to not make mistakes. But if you have already decided to keep this up, I'd suggest that you ask your existing customers - as they fill out orders, offer a survey. For the economics I think HC-110 is hard to beat as it virtually never goes bad; with almost anything else you would ideally add a clip test or some sort of added labor costs in screening the mixes. If you step away from HC-110 you might need to add a QC step in order to assure the occasional unhappy customer that the actual processing was up to spec.

Personally, I would want to see Xtol available, but I am not the sort of person who would be sending B&W film out for processing.

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I agree with Mr Bill. I have processed film, colour and B&W professionally for the last 38 years and there can be such a thing as offering too much choice. (jack of all trades and master of none).

I don't know your customer base but I think offering too much of a diversity may have an adverse effect on the bottom line, profit. (turnover is not profit)

If you are processing by hand, then I think that in it's self is a premium service. Offer a faster turnaround for an extra premium? Select two developers say Rodinal and Xtol and perfect them first and then offer alongside your HC-110.

I would focus on keeping your present customers happy and returning and then little by little try an attract new customers with your new services.

It's your business and you will know best what to decide. Just don't be like the committee that tried to invent the horse and ended up with a camel.

I will only speak on behalf of the developers I have used and have personal experience with. Xtol replenished is a definite yes+, it's now my main developer for most everything. Next would be Pyrocat-HDC. I went from Wimberly's WD2D+ then WD2H+ to Pyrocat-HD to Pyrocat-MC and now have settled on Pyrocat-HDC for scenes of higher contrast. I think a staining developer like Pyrocat-HDC would be a very wise choice for your lab. The reason???? Simply that many folks out there would love to try a Pyro-style developers, but are just a little gun-shy due to the fact that pyro developer come with a "word of caution" in mixing and using them. I believe there would be a high demand for a lab using a pyro-style developer. Oh, and Pryocat developers are highly concentrated and keep forever or almost forever when mixed with Glycol. Rodinal is very good also and has great dilution rates. I have also used DK-50 and have nothing but good things to say about it also. Still, if you choose any one/ones I'd make sure to include a pyro-style also. Hey, if it doesn't work out you can always cross it off the list.