Thoughts on the One-Hour-Photo

[erikhaugsby]

So, I put my first roll of Illford HP5 through my M2 this weekend while driving around in the St. Louis area. I knew that there were some decent shots on the roll, but many of them were horribly under/over-exposed (I really want to get to the point where I can shoot without a meter..)
However, when I realized that I don't have a darkroom in my basement I decided to just run the roll down to my local Snyders for developing and a set of prints.
I asked the lady at the counter if she could develop the roll, considering its not a common Kodak C-41 emulsion, and she assured me it would work however it would need to be an overnight and not one-hour.

How thoughtless of me to let her take my roll.

When I come back a little while later and she is there at the counter almost as if she is waiting for me. I walk up and ask for my roll, fully expecting atleast some decently exposed shots.
She, however, decides to tell me that she never sent the roll out to a developer and instead took a full day to develop it in the machine directly behind her and the counter.
The machine entirely wasted my negs--there is nothing on the entire 36-shot roll, there aren't even the usual code numbers and film name around the sprocket holes.

She didn't even apologize, but simply said that I might be better developing it somewhere else next time.




Maybe this is why my afternoon has been kind of sour, but has anyone else had experiences like this?

 

[Fedzilla_Bob]

She ran it through c-41 process? Sorry, that's not fair.

I've never had that experience. I've had the near opposite-

Went to a local Ritz Photo with my first roll of Ilford xp2 Super, handed it to the guy at the counter. He handed it back saying "we can't do that, that isn't a process we do here... Maybe Bob Davis in Lojolla."

I smiled, thanked him and pointed out "it's c-41." He takes it back looks at the cartridge with a "cool." "Come back in 30 minutes, I've never processed this before."

Came out fine. That guy moved on and I don't trust the apes that followed him.

Same thing happened at a local pro color processor. Same results.

 

[erikhaugsby]

I'm not exactly sure if it was C-41, but she seemed to imply (I ask her "Is it this...? Can you develop XXX film?") that it was indeed C-41, and I can't imagine that a Snyders would do E-6.

Ohwell.

 

[bmattock]

I'm sorry to hear what happened. Ilford HP5+ is *NOT* a C41 emulsion. Ilford, Kodak, and Fuji (I think) all make a C41 emulsion that is still Black & White, but HP5+ is not.

If you try to process it in C41 chemistry, this is exactly what happens.

All C41 film will say on it - C41. Printed right on the roll itself. Whether it is Black & White or color.

I'm very sorry that happened to you, that's no fun at all.

Best Regards,

Bill Mattocks

 

[matt fury]

It won't get you your shots back, but you should definitely talk to the manager. You made sure to ask, etc etc. Should be worth some free film or processing or something...dunno if that's worth anything to you, but you should be compensated somehow IMO.

 

[Nikon Bob]

Very sorry to hear that this happened to you and I agree with Matt that you should talk to the manager re some form of compensation. I will never take B&W film to a 1 hour processor because of this possibility. The 1 hour place I use does well with C41 but that is all I would trust them with.

Nikon Bob

 

[VinceC]

>>...when I realized that I don't have a darkroom in my basement ...<<

If you want to continue dabbling with traditional black-and-white emulsions liike HP-5, you need to solve the development problem first. Many well-stocked photo shops will still have developing reels and chemistry to get you in business for, say, less than $50. Film can be loaded into the tank inside a light-tight closet or any windowless room or, after dark, rooms that aren't quite light tight. You can probably get old darkroom tanks, etc., for free. I just gave a bunch of stuff away to a photo student.

Sorry to hear this story. Usually the most a one-hour photo place will do is give you a free roll of film for a botched job.

C41 is color machine-process chemistry as used in one-hour photolabs and, for the most part, does not vary from one roll to the next (and so can be easily automated).

HP5 and other "traditional' black-and-white emulsions use hand-developed black-and-white darkroom chemistry, with development times and dilutions matched to the emulsion and speed. I'd say the great majority of one-hour photo employees won't even be aware of this type of process. Some professional labs (catering to wedding photographers, etc) might do hand-developed B&W chemistry, but not cheaply - -you've got to pay for half an hour of someone's time. Developing your film is all about how much you trust that person. A good litmus test might be, if the person is even AWARE of rangefinder cameras, there might be hope.

Another route is to use c-41 black-and-white emulsions -- Kodak Black-and-White (sometimes called CN) is very common in U.S. drugstores. That's the stuff that's okay to run through a one-hour photo lab. These emulsions also have astonishing exposure latitude ... effectively, you can get quaility images from ISO 50 to 800 -- the lower ISOs will be denser and have less grain while the higher ISOs will be thinner but with more grain. Most folks like to shoot the emulsion around ISO 200 ... in the middle of its latitude curve, allowing lots of leeway for either under- or over-exposure.

At this point in the changeable history of photography, the photographer is going to have to be the one who's expert in how his/her films should be developed. The processing labs are so automated -- and hand-chemistry is so uncommon -- that the people behind the couinter really are, for the most part, hourly wage-earners with little knowledge of photography beyond a quick class on how to run the machine.

 

[bmattock]

Vince, I agree with you. I have had to stop giving my slide film to the one-hour place. I knew they could not do the E6 chemistry onsite and would have to send it out, but lately, the clerks do not even know what slide film *is*. Most of the drug/convenience stores around here don't even sell the stuff anymore - I did find some out-dated slide film in one store, but it is gone now. You try to describe it - but try to describe a slide projector to someone who is 17 years old and has never SEEN one!

Anyway, you hit the nail on the head - one-hour places are great for C41 only, and for everything else, we photographers have to be the experts now - the places that process it (except for pro shops, I guess) have no idea what they're doing - just monkeys pushing buttons that they've been told to press, with no understanding of what they're doing.

Best Regards,

Bill Mattocks

 

[pvdhaar]

- just monkeys pushing buttons that they've been told to press, with no understanding of what they're doing.

Bill, you really should stop comparing these 1hr processor dudes to monkeys.. I think it's a bit unfair for the monkeys.. At least they can be trained to press the right button to retrieve their bananas.. 😀

 

[VinceC]

The kid at my drugstore looks to be 17 years old, and he's very intent on doing a good job. You can tell from one store to another if the machine operator cares, and this young man is really trying to put out some nice images, so I often won't drop off my rolls if he's not on duty. BUT, I'd be surprised if he ever shot a roll of film in his life, and when he sees my 50-year-old camera, there doesn't seem to be any recoginition that it's anything but a point and shoot. He's concerned about the image, and that's what matters to him.

 

[bmattock]

The kid at my drugstore looks to be 17 years old, and he's very intent on doing a good job. You can tell from one store to another if the machine operator cares, and this young man is really trying to put out some nice images, so I often won't drop off my rolls if he's not on duty. BUT, I'd be surprised if he ever shot a roll of film in his life, and when he sees my 50-year-old camera, there doesn't seem to be any recoginition that it's anything but a point and shoot. He's concerned about the image, and that's what matters to him.

The fact that the kid cares at all bodes well, I'd say. So many don't - working the film counter is like being told to go work the coffee bar at the local bookstore - something they had to do because the boss doesn't like them. And it shows.

Best Regards,

Bill Mattocks

 

[BrianShaw]

>>

Sorry to hear this story. Usually the most a one-hour photo place will do is give you a free roll of film for a botched job.

.

This is true with pro labs also... there really is little else that they can do.

Self-flagellation would be nice, but I suspect all one would really get out of most 1-hour photo clerks is self-flatulation.

 

[ballfresno]

I'll add my two cents worth to this: I use Ilford XP2 and you'd be amazed at the number of 1 hour photo shops that will not take it. No matter how closely you point out the C-41 bit, they don't believe you.

Luckily, the 1 hour lab near work knows about XP2 and does a fantastic job with it. Although the mini-labs are indeed automated, the operators do have some control over them and, at least at this place, the prints that come out look like black and white and not green and white...

What I'm looking for now is a place that will also do reasonable high resolution scans (6MP say) instead of the typical 2MP or less.

 

[ch1]

I am fortunate in that living in NYC (during weekdays) I have a one-hour place a block from my office that is a "branch store" of a major NY photo retailer (Alkit). So their counter people, if not geniuses, at least know enough to send HP-5/T-Max etc. out to a "pro lab" and that they can develop XP-2 or TCN etc. on-site in one-hour.

Funny thing is, while I prefer the higher image "quality" of the HP-5's etc., I find that the "pro labs" are less careful with the developed film then the one-hour guys. :bang:

 

[erikhaugsby]

Wow, this is a much larger response than I expected.

Vince: Thanks for all the tips on buying darkroom supplies
Bill: Thanks for the comments, but fortunately I wasn't asked to pay for anything (developing would be the only thing that I might have had to, as the Snyders desk lady didn't print me any prints)


So, I guess I've learned my lesson the hard way with my first roll of film.
Nowehere to go but up, right?

 

[yossarian]

The root of the problem has less to do with 17 year old operators and more to do with
30 year old owner-managers using Daddy's money. I printed at a one hour lab for
five years and I quickly established a work hierarchy with the owner. If I came to work at 11:00 and began printing, only to see sub-standard results, I would ask "John, did you do the MBL (master balance) this morning?". He would lie and say
he had. Knowing he was lying I shut production down and got the printer balanced, which takes about 15 minutes, then resumed my work.

It didn't take long before people would leave off multiple rolls with instructions that
"only Fred can print these". It's so easy to get great results out of these minilabs
that there is no excuse for crappy printing, other than the owner has strictly a "bottom-line" mentality. And when I say easy, I mean easy even for the monkeys,
with a little training. If you know how prints should look, you spoil yourself because
you know nobody else will print with the same attention to results.

If I had ever done something as unforgivably stupid as running a roll of black and white through C-41 I'd have quit my job in shame. I still miss not being able to
print my own stuff. That may be partly why I've cut back on the amount I shoot.
You can thank Mall-Wart and the rest for driving all the good, small labs out of business. And if you've been taking your film to one of those places just to save a
buck or two when there are actual labs still in business, I don't feel one damn bit
sorry for you if you get sh*t results. You're getting what you deserve--cheap.

Fred

 

[Nikon Bob]

Fred

Call me cheap as I had the local pro lab screw up some B&W film for me and don't trust them anymore than the 1 hour guys. For the money charged I will take my chances with the 1 hour guys for my C41 stuff.

Nikon Bob

 

[VinceC]

It's true. I'm cheap. But I probably couldn't afford my hobby with pro-lab prices. I haven't the time/desire to do my own darkroom anymore but really enjoy shooting a roll or two a week of my familly and friends. I take the film to a drugstore that also makes Kodak photoCDs at an sort-of-acceptible 2MB resolution, and I spend maybe 30 or 45 minutes a week messing around with the images on PhotoShop and printing a few out for neighbors and sending the kid pix to grandparents.

 

[ruben]

....Maybe this is why my afternoon has been kind of sour, but has anyone else had experiences like this?

Time to confess it despite the shame. Unlike Melanie heroic unfolding story, not any enthusiastic drive, nor my intelectual darkroom mentor David Vestal, but my shitty neighbourhood one hour lab (best in Jerusalem) - was the real tour de force for setting up my own home darkroom.

Why shitty ?
Altough I never let them to touch a black and white film, an unforgetable crime of your own, Erik, they showed a master skill with my color negs, to crop the prints exactly at the wrong side, and whenever a single frame had to get a permanent ruining dot, I do not know how they always manged to meticulously select the best one. And by that time I was shipping prints for magazines. Misteries of photography. The system worked faultlessly, time and again, without mercy.

But the real nice thing about photography on the other hand, is that for every problem your home cooked solution.

Cheers,
Ruben

 

[erikhaugsby]

And if you've been taking your film to one of those places just to save a
buck or two when there are actual labs still in business, I don't feel one damn bit
sorry for you if you get sh*t results. You're getting what you deserve--cheap.

The reason that I took my roll to Snyders was because it was convinent (5 minutes from my house), fast (1 day turnover, other places mail it into some developer and I need to wait a week--for this roll i just wanted quick results to see how my guesstumate exposures fared) and, granted, less expensive than the other mail-in shops.

This is quite literally the first roll of film that I have ever run through a camera I can call my own--I'll be the first to admit that I don't have experience in dealing with film photolabs and emulsion specifications.