KillRamsey
Hall of Famer
- Location
- Hood River, OR
- Name
- Kyle
My normal film process is to take my Ektar or whatever to a local camera shop for developing only, and then I scan on an Epson at home. The store sends it out to a lab outside town, the turnaround for C-41 film is about 4 business days, and it costs about $11. Quality has mostly been good, but sometimes there are chunks of black stuff on the negatives that I have to clean off. Mostly fine, though. No issues.
A friend pointed out that right there also in Harvard Square is a CVS with a photo lab. They charge $2 to develop a roll, and another $4 for a set of ~200k sized scans on a cd.
So I decided to try it out... I shot up a roll of Ektar, went in last night at 5 before I picked up my daughter from school, and dropped it off. "When would you like to pick it up?" I don't... I don't know... what is the normal range of time it takes you guys, like 2 or 3 days or something? "No, an hour." OH. So, like these could be done by 6?! "Yep. So you'll come get them at 6?" Yeah sure!
<INTERJECTION: I used to work at one of these labs in maybe 1999, so you'd think I wouldn't be surprised by all this, but somehow I managed to be floored by 1990-era film processing technology.</INTERJECTION>
I biked to her school, took my time getting her out, biked slowly back to the square, dawdled and such, but was still 20 minutes early. At 10 til I went up and asked how it was coming, and he said "oh yeah they're right here, let me cut the negatives for you." So in 50 minutes, and for $6, I got my negatives and a disc of scans.
Either there's nothing wrong with the developing, or I am not sophisticated enough to pick up on it. It looks just fine to me. The scans are better than I expected, though nowhere near as nice as the Epson set to 3 meg file size. Colors on their scans are too saturated. But as thumbnails, hells bells they are fantastic.
Experiment: Successful. Next time I'm going to shoot cheapo film and see how good a picture set I can get for less than $10 all-in. Suck it, $2,000 full frame cameras... maximizing the cost-image-goodness over here.
A friend pointed out that right there also in Harvard Square is a CVS with a photo lab. They charge $2 to develop a roll, and another $4 for a set of ~200k sized scans on a cd.
So I decided to try it out... I shot up a roll of Ektar, went in last night at 5 before I picked up my daughter from school, and dropped it off. "When would you like to pick it up?" I don't... I don't know... what is the normal range of time it takes you guys, like 2 or 3 days or something? "No, an hour." OH. So, like these could be done by 6?! "Yep. So you'll come get them at 6?" Yeah sure!
<INTERJECTION: I used to work at one of these labs in maybe 1999, so you'd think I wouldn't be surprised by all this, but somehow I managed to be floored by 1990-era film processing technology.</INTERJECTION>
I biked to her school, took my time getting her out, biked slowly back to the square, dawdled and such, but was still 20 minutes early. At 10 til I went up and asked how it was coming, and he said "oh yeah they're right here, let me cut the negatives for you." So in 50 minutes, and for $6, I got my negatives and a disc of scans.
Either there's nothing wrong with the developing, or I am not sophisticated enough to pick up on it. It looks just fine to me. The scans are better than I expected, though nowhere near as nice as the Epson set to 3 meg file size. Colors on their scans are too saturated. But as thumbnails, hells bells they are fantastic.
Experiment: Successful. Next time I'm going to shoot cheapo film and see how good a picture set I can get for less than $10 all-in. Suck it, $2,000 full frame cameras... maximizing the cost-image-goodness over here.