is this a common experience or just unlucky?

[msheppler]

Hello everyone,

I've been shooting slide and taking it to a professional shop which does a great job, (Chrome in Georgetown, DC) but unfortunately is a bit off the beaten path for me. So as an experiment I decided to try some negative film and have it developed locally at a Ritz camera store, (which is a popular chain in this area). I opted for 1 hour development and had some prints made. I was going to be scanning these negatives. Well, the results were terrible. The prints look bad, scratches on the film and the grain looks horrible. (I was shooting Kodak Ektar 100).

Is this a common experience with using local small shop camera stores or did I find a bad operation? Should I have gone to Walmart? Or have them professionally developed from the store that does my slides if I want the best results.

 

[Roger Hicks]

Pure luck.

The price/quality correlation is roughly zero.

One of the best labs I ever found was a local chemist (drugstore in American) a quarter of an hour's walk from where I lived.

Then the enthusiast who ran it, left, and quality went through the floor.

When I lived in Guadalupe, California, there was one lab in Santa Maria (10 miles away) that was pretty good, and one that was awful. And so forth. You might find the following piece about choosing labs to be moderately interesting.

http://www.rogerandfrances.com/photoschool/ps choosing a lab.html

Cheers,

R.

 

[SolaresLarrave]

Not a commont thing. It may be a bad operation, bad employee or bad day... whatever it is, never trust them again with your photographs.

Things may change, though... Years ago, I gave a roll of film to my local Walgreens. The results were pitiful: crude cuts on negatives, lousy prints... the works (no scratches, though). I never returned to them.

Months later, I got prints from an activity. I didn't know they were going to give the rolls to Walgreens... and I'm glad I didn't tell them not to: excellent work, negatives carefully cut, nice, clean prints.

In short, give Ritz another try. Just make sure the person who receives your film is not the one who received it from you the first time. If even after that the results aren't good enough, drop them.

 

[msheppler]

Thanks

Thanks

Thanks for telling me your experiences. I really want to see my images on the Kodak Ektar so I'll try it again. I've been having great results scanning fuji astia with my coolscan 5000/silverfast combo. I wanted to see how the software worked with negs.

 

[Thardy]

Hello everyone,

I've been shooting slide and taking it to a professional shop which does a great job, (Chrome in Georgetown, DC) but unfortunately is a bit off the beaten path for me. So as an experiment I decided to try some negative film and have it developed locally at a Ritz camera store, (which is a popular chain in this area). I opted for 1 hour development and had some prints made. I was going to be scanning these negatives. Well, the results were terrible. The prints look bad, scratches on the film and the grain looks horrible. (I was shooting Kodak Ektar 100).

Is this a common experience with using local small shop camera stores or did I find a bad operation? Should I have gone to Walmart? Or have them professionally developed from the store that does my slides if I want the best results.

I've taken some film to Walgreens before and had good results, and also had terrible results such as scratches on the film, and spots. You wouldn't think that should happen at a camera store.

However 8-9 years ago I took some 120 film to a Ritz or Wolf pro shop in town and the film was ruined (completely clear).

Common, probably more than ever.

 

[payasam]

I've sometimes got back film cut into strips but not put into sleeves. Filthy fingerprints on prints are common. Speaking to people kindly sometimes helps, but scolding never works.

 

[Micky D]

It could be the scanning. Is this the first time you've scanned colour neg?

My scanner loves slides and black and white negs, but C-41 colour negs are always grainy and horrible.

 

[msheppler]

It is the first time I scanned a negatives. But I really beginning suspect the film dev operation because of all the scratches. I'll
have some professional developing done and do a comparison.

 

[squirrel$$$bandit]

This is why I started doing C41 at home. If it got messed up, at least it was my fault, and I wouldn't spend the afternoon stalking around fuming about the supermarket...

 

[M. Valdemar]

If the film was completely clear it was your fault. It wasn't exposed.

I've taken some film to Walgreens before had had good results, and also had terrible results such as scratches on the film, and spots. You wouldn't think that should happen at a camera store.

However 8-9 years ago I took some 120 film to a Ritz or Wolf pro shop in town and the film was ruined (completely clear).

Common, probably more than ever.

 

[Thardy]

If the film was completely clear it was your fault. It wasn't exposed.

Actually the whole film (even the edge markings) was completely 'clear' not just unexposed frames.

 

[aad]

Scratches were likely the lab's fault, but "grain" is more likely a function of scan settings. Slide film and C41 take different levels of USM-I keep USM shut off on the scanner. Maybe try again?

 

[msheppler]

I don't think it was usm. That function is off be default in Silverfast AI. You do a scan of a selected area using your usm filter settings and then it's applied to the entire image when you scan. Silverfast didn't have a setting for the Ektar film so I was experimenting with using Kodak Gold at 100 asa.
I'll run some more tests and try to sort it out. I still think they may have somehow botched the development. It's supposed to be a fine-grain negative film but it looked terrible. And this was using a late model summicron on my camera.