"Dip and Dunk Processing" Where?

clayne said:
I hate to say it (because I believe good labs need all the business they can get) you're much better off just doing it at home. Black and white processing is child's play.
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Agreed.

Back when I used to shoot a lot of E6, I would process it at home, too. There are a couple of more steps and chemicals involved, but it is not that much different from processing B&W film.

The main difference is that you have to maintain tighter control on chemical temperature during the first developer and the color developer. It is really not that hard to do, either.

I used to develop E6 in my kitchen sink, using warm water to control the developing process temperatures. My slides always came out looking perfect in terms of color accuracy - and I never had problems with scratched slides.

Developing film is not voodoo or black magic - give it a try. ;)
 
Every lab will do smaller batches in rotary processors - even if they own hanger type (dip and dunk) processors, don't hold your breath that pushed colour or less common black and white film types will go through them. Unless the lab is running so low on jobs that they can modify the processing speed - which usually implies a volume where their chemistry is not perfectly regenerated.

So, no, dip and dunk is not the king of processing - it is much superior to continuously processing minilabs (where any slack in the maintenance will show up in the shape of scratches and dirt embedded in the emulsion), and more affordable than rotary or hand processing, but it is lacking flexibility, and its quality depends on a continuous work load (or high enough prices to keep the thing running all week on test strips). Back in the days I avoided having film processed in the first few hours of the day, on Mondays (when the chemistry might be off spec after the weekend) and Fridays (when every agency pushed for having their "this week" jobs finished, so that the lab was sometimes working above the capacity limits).
 
The last time I asked, Dominion Camera, 112 West Broad St, Falls Church, VA 44710, 703 532-6700, dominioncamera@gmail.com (So presumably Ace Camera, 44710 Cape Ct, Ste 122, Ashburn, VA 20147, 703 430-3333, who have purchased Dominion, also) does D&D. I've never had that done, but I have had other development done at Dominion and it was done well.

They also related they would accept development work by mail, and return it the same way, if prepaid.
 
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