Bummer, dude.
When it comes to developing traditional B&W - the beauty of it is that
there is no right or wrong way to do it. It is not an exercise in
conforming to a rule or a process, it is an exercise in understanding
how the film and developer interact and how your workflow (both
in-camera and in-the-lab) affects that. That's why the tech sheets all
talk about the recommended development times being the starting point
for determining your own process. My expericne with commercial labs is
that they just develop to standard times and leave it at that. Worst
case - they combine multiple rolls and average times. So we stick films
x y and z in the tank and their recommended development times in D76
1:1 are 10, 12, and 14 minutes. We'll do the whole lot at 12 minutes and
call it a day.
If you can't scan your own film I'd suggest using a chromogenic B&W -
basically C41 film. Let the lab develop it and scan it. There the
development process *is* an exercise in conforming to a rule, so you
should get consistent results. If your images are too faint or too
dense, you can attribute it to your exposure and not the processing.
Kodak 400CN or Ilford XP2 come to mind. You might want to confirm with
your lab that they can scan the Ilford without a color cast.
- MCC
On 5/29/2012 1:23 PM, Kenton Brede wrote:
So I decided a few weeks ago to give film a try. I bought a couple
old Pentax cameras and started shooting. Locally we have a camera
shop that will develop black and white film and scan to disk. So I
shot a few rolls and really liked the process of shooting a manual
film camera. So I thought I'd go a little deeper and start developing
the negatives and have the same shop scan them for me. So I worked
with the owner and bought all the chemicals. I mixed the D-76 and
Fixer last night in preparation of developing three rolls tonight. So
I called them this morning and asked what the price would be to scan
three rolls. This is the breakdown:
Prices for them to develop one roll of B&W and scan to disk.
$5.25 developing fee, $3.99 for the scan to CD = $9.24
Prices for them to scan my negatives, 36 frames.
69 cents per image, $3.99 for CD = $28.83
I asked why they were charging so much more for doing less work, and
the answer was, after consulting management, "We give a price break on
the scanning, if you develop your film here."
Needless to say, I won't be developing my negatives tonight.
Anyway, just a rant. Sorry it was so long. I know there are cheaper
scanning alternatives online. I really didn't want to purchase a
scanner right away. I wanted to wait to make sure I was going to
stick with film, before buying a scanner. But at those prices it
wouldn't take long for the scanner to pay for itself.
--
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