Paul's Film Photography Blog

Just wanted to give a quick shout out for a local business, Photo USA on Colonial Avenue in Roanoke. I’ve used them for several rolls of color print film developing, and am more than happy with the results and especially their handling of my film. No fingerprints and no scratches or crud on the last half-dozen frames because they know that a 36-exposure roll held at waist level will drag along the ground behind you and therefore refrain from doing that.

At $3/roll plus sales tax for C-41 develop only ($4 for 120 format) at time of writing this, they’re not much more expensive than CVS were, and cheaper than mailing out. They’ll package up my uncut negatives in continuous plastic sleeve which means I can just lay the whole thing out flat on the kitchen table for cutting. Only then do I need to don the creepy white cotton gloves to transfer the strips into archival pages. Much easier to deal with.

I’ll be trying them for some E-6 development soon, once I’ve run a roll of the Fujichrome film I ordered recently through a camera.

If you’re shooting film in the Roanoke Virginia area and want it processed by people who know what they’re doing, I’d recommend Photo USA.

The glory of E-6, inadequately captured by digital.

I’m still toying with the idea of shooting E-6 after being so very impressed by the Kodachrome I shot in the final days of last year and especially the results I got shooting a roll of 6×6 on Fuji Velvia 50. The film itself isn’t much more expensive, especially in 120 format (actually medium format Fuji Provia 100F is cheaper than Kodak Ektar 100 in 5 packs!), but you can nearly triple the development cost unless you DIY it or send it out in big batches to one of the larger mail-order labs.

I really like the end result though, the workflow is a little simpler because I can easily make selects for scanning using a light table and my 10x-loupe-assisted eyeball, and did I mention how much I like the results?

One option which might work is the Arista 1 pint kit sold by Freestyle Photographic. Pick that up along with a 5-pack of film, shoot the 5 rolls and develop them in one run. Cost is a little under half for development vs processing locally. Or batch up those 5 rolls and send them out to somewhere like Dwayne’s or North Coast, using the local lab if I absolutely must have it developed right away. That would be competitive with DIY and less mess, yet wouldn’t really penalize me much as far as time to development since I’d be batching the rolls up anyway, then finding time to spend several hours developing.

I’ll have to think on it, because color negative material has its advantages too and is cheap to develop locally.

When I started getting back into shooting 35mm film, I was a little worried. Would I be able to get it developed anywhere nearby? Would the quality be any good? Would I stand a good chance of having my negatives trashed by some kid who didn’t know or care what they were doing? Would I have to set myself up to process C-41 at home just to ensure the safety of my film, never mind the quality?

I’ve heard the minilab horror stories, after all. And the pro-lab horror stories too, come to think of it.

Turns out I needn’t have worried, the CVS round the corner from where I work (the Westlake store at Hardy, VA) has me covered. I just processed and scanned my 10th roll since December through them yesterday and was pleased with the results yet again. I’m pretty sure they mostly know me by sight now and this time I even got the film back with a thank you note! Another couple of rolls and I’ll probably be able to rock in there and ask for “the usual, please”!

The scans are inexpensive and good for printing up to about 5×7 and for proofing and web use. They’re auto-adjusted for levels, which is great if you’re using some sort of flaky point and shoot with marginal exposure control, not so much if you’re using a manual SLR and hoping to learn from your errors! Higher resolution and non-adjusted scans would be great but I haven’t explored that possibility yet, other than being vaguely aware that the Noritsu machine they use can do both. Ideally I’ll have a scanner of my own sometime soon anyway; the net result of that would be that I go process-only at the CVS but end up shooting a whole lot more and sending more rolls their way for processing.

More important in that regard, the processing and handling has been excellent. The only fingerprints on any negatives have been my own before I bought some white cotton gloves to use while working with the negs. I haven’t seen any obvious scratches or dirt either. They’re fine with returning the film uncut, which allows me to cut to the lengths I want (6 frame strips, perfect for the desktop film scanner I don’t yet own).

Sure, I could do my own processing. If I ever get into shooting black and white it makes economic sense to process at home, but for C-41 I can’t buy the chemicals for any less per roll than it costs me to process at CVS and it’s a lot less trouble to just drop the roll(s) off in the morning and pick them up after work.

So, thank you CVS Westlake for doing an excellent job. I really appreciate it.