Another mini lab bites the dust.

Ducky

Ducky

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I just had a roll processed at my local wallyworld 30 minute lab. I was told it will be closing. Apparently the neighborhood stores in my area (north of Dallas) are closing their labs and only the super-store labs will offer 30 min processing. They will continue to offer drop/pickup service.

Ah well, so it goes.
 
Down the road a piece in Austin, I still rely on my local full-service photographic store for color C41 processing. Their not so mini Frontier print processor cost nearly a quarter of million dollars.

Most general merchandise stores, drug stores and grocery chains with in-store mini-labs have them to get you into the store and hope you buy other items.

I doubt that every Wallyworld needs such a draw. In many small towns they are the only large retailer period.
 
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Isn't there a Wolf's Camera anywhere nears where you're at? I don't think they do 30 min service, but I think they're still processing film. I had the one in Lewisville do some Kodak color film for me last Summer and it came out pretty good. They're also willing to just dev the film and not do any prints if you wish.

Is there any Walgreens around there? Or perhaps Costco?

Still, it's one of the reasons why I just try to focus on black and white the most. That way I can at least dev it myself without tooo much hassle....
 
I don't know about the situation in the US but in the UK the main reason the minilabs are closing is because of competition from the Supermarkets. In Lincoln 5 labs have shut over the last 3 years. In the same time period, 3 of the out of town supermarkets have installed state of the art new minilabs. The labs shut after these opened.

As an aside, a recent survey showed that there are now fewer filling stations in the UK than at any time since the mid 30's. That must mean that the car is about to finish. 😀 😀

Kim
 
NW Houston: Sam's Club has the big machine moved from a nearby Wal-Mart. They are the central collection point for Wal-Marts in the neighborhood.

For something completely different: A husband/wife team rent a corner of a new drug store in Winnsboro, Texas. Popualtion: 1,000-2,000. They have a nice Agfa C-41 machine, a flatbed scanner for MF and a small portrait studio. I give them as much business as I can.
 
Not necessarily a bad thing. I use Wally's for slide film drop and pickup anyways.

Now let's shoot more film and give them a reason to keep the service going.
 
my local just put two new machines in!

here they are
2162705568_d9b3bfdef1.jpg
 
I figure the market may be doing a contraction, I have way too many labs for the population nearby.

I posted earlier on an urban Walgreens doing 400 rolls a day, but I asked at the rural Walgreens near my house-they're at less than 10/day outside of holidays. So there's likely enough business to support 2 labs within 5 miles of my house, but not 5.
 
sitemistic said:
The Wal-mart here tells me that they will likely shut down their film processing within the year to yield room for those stand-alone terminals where you insert a memory card or CD and print your own photos. There are already four of them in that area and there is usually a line to use them. They plan to still send film to Fuji for processing, though, for those who still shoot film.
Click to expand...

This is how it was done in the days prior to there being minilabs in thousands of locations. I do think we will see this happen everywhere in fairly short order as film sales continue to decline.
 
Aye. Once upon a time, I was the guy who worked all night to turn around the "Overnight" 4x6 print service. Another guy drove all over southwest Louisiana during the day in a beat up VW picking up & dropping off orders. He arrived around dark & I worked until everything was done. Whereupon the guy in the VW started the process all over again. Nothing wrong with that. I'm rarely in a big hurry anyway.
 
Thanks to digital compacts we now have lots of minilabs and they do film, too 🙂

Like in the old days with film people drop their SD cards at a lab. But nowadays they want 1 hour processing instead of 24 hours or a week. So I have three minilabs within a 30 minute walk.

But my trusty cornershop with the analog Noritsu processor and printer closed, the former owner is now selling roses in pubs and takes pictures with a polaroid 🙁
 
Kim Coxon said:
As an aside, a recent survey showed that there are now fewer filling stations in the UK than at any time since the mid 30's. That must mean that the car is about to finish. 😀 😀
Kim
Click to expand...

Flip around, that's not a bad analogy. At some point in the future, people will stop making cars powered by gasoline. Fans of gasoline will keep driving their gasoline cars, and refineries will continue to produce gasoline to sell them. People will sell old cars for outrageous prices. But, eventually, all the gasoline cars will wear out and break down. Sometime before the world notices the Last Car Powered By Gasoline, refineries will get out of the gasoline business because they can't making money on it.

Film will eventually disappear as a commercial product for the same reason.

BTW, I suspect if you asked most Americans -- not photographers, just people with cameras -- where to get filmed developed, many would say they don't know.
 
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Sparrow said:
my local just put two new machines in!
Click to expand...

A number of the Walgreens here are upgrading with new Noritsu machines.

The one I used to go to until a losing round of C41 Roulette upgraded their Fuji Frontier a year or so ago.

I'm doing as little business as I can with Wally World, just because ...
 
Are these the same minilabs that used to scratch everyone's films before running them through exhausted developer and printed the frames with odd crops and color shifts? Except for the rolls that disappeared entirely?
 
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