Wal-Mart and no negatives.

I was using Costco and they might still do it but I don't knoe because now I do my own C-41 at home. It takes 30 minutes start to finish.. I do have to wait a couple of hours for drying before I can scan.

Other than my time it costs me less than $1 a roll to develop. This is less time than the drive to a (non-existent) store

I scan on a used minilab scanner I bought cheap about 5 years ago. Takes 5 minutes per roll plus whatever photoshop post processing I want to do. (usually just one-click auto-tome). I'm limited to 2000x3000 but can save as TIFF with no compression.

I've done over 80 rolls of color and the savings has paid for my equipment a while back.

The best thing is I can do it in my pajamas at 3 am if I wish.

E. von Hoegh said:

Yep. One more reason to boycott wallyworld. Their business model is catering to the sheeple and droolers, while screwing their employees. They've never got one single cent of my money, and never will.

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Amen, brother.

The mistake is to think Walmart etc. process film for 'photographers', they process film for people who own a film camera, and they are two very different things.

Steve

250swb said:

The mistake is to think Walmart etc. process film for 'photographers', they process film for people who own a film camera, and they are two very different things.

Steve

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When I was young I worked the Camera and Sporting Goods department at Venture. Venture was similar to a Target store. Fox Photo did our developing and printing. It was a great deal. The price was cheap and Fox used Kodak chemicals and paper. If you went straight to Fox it cost you a lot more.

The problem was whenever someone shot a wedding or other important event, Fox seemed to lose the film. We would give the customer a free roll of film but of course they were not too happy about the situation.

E. von Hoegh said:

I have my C41 35mm done at the local Rite-Aid. They do an excellent job, and the 3x5 prints are OK. The larger prints are just awful, so I have the roll returned as a strip.

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hi EvH

rite aid sends the film to the same place ( if you did the send out service ) - fuji labs
the difference is rite aid pay for the return shipping of the images .. wm doesn't
pay return freight so they get the images beamed to a kiosk ...

Before


This is what our local ASDA aka Walmart managed to do to my other half's photos, (Note the ugly scratches !) Develop only and scanned by me. I had to learn Gimp to rescue and make them useable. She is learning film photography and it was a huge disappointment to both of us.....

After

The stories of working the lab at Walgreens when I started in 2004. With the focus of the stores towards either the person who shoots the occasional phone photo, to ones who print 200+ digital prints from the vacation, or for the whole year. How little there is focus of maintaining the chemistry at the lab, leaving a lot of negatives turn a bit thin and the paper shift to strange colors of greens and blues due to lack of daily densitometry tests and correction.

I am glad that they aren't doing film anymore, because even at the high profits ($9.00 24 exp per roll w/prints) there is almost no volume coming in. Only people who don't have any form of digital image capture use OTUCs. The chemistry sits, and expires from the lack of use. The skills I learned from running that lab is meaningless in this new world.

Support the local small labs or make one yourself with a camera club. Film has become a alternative process, that I have experienced first hand that change, from processing over 50 rolls a day to only 10-20. All the pros who came to the store are gone. I can't blame them at all for it.

I had 5 rolls of Ektar and Portra in 35mm developed in that lab, and found stains in those images from processing from different cameras and lenses. That was the last time I processed a roll there, even in the place I work at. I compared the prints over the years from 2004 to 2013, and the years before 2010 were good, when I worked there full time in the lab. Once I left the lab, it went bad.

I just do my own B/W and C41, and scan at home and make the occasional print there on the Epson 9000 series printer. I am done with these "big box" store labs.