120 film dev labs?

Hi all

Getting a little bit bored with devving negatives, so looking to use mail order to give more time for prints. Does anyone know of a good, cheap service for b&w 120 roll film? I used 7dayshop's lab for my 35mm E6 stuff but they don't do b&w.

Thanks in advance

Matt

Hi,
I have always found the service from Lab35 and Lab120 to be excellent. At one stage they were "sister" labs but now everything is at Lab35.

http://www.lab35imaging.com/

Kim

The character of the image can be totally changed by different film/developer combinations.

Personally, I would retain control of that critical process. It may be a pain, but you will get better results than using a commercial lab.

In my view, the only conceivable reason for continuing to use film is the pleasure and control that you get from doing the processing yourself. If you're going to hand that over to a lab, there is no reason not to go digital.

G

I do not enjoy developing the negatives, in fact I find it a pain, and whilst I appreciate that I might lose some control by shipping out the neg development I think it's minimal compared to the printing. All that really can be changed is the particular chemical used (unless we start pushing/pulling which I don't do), hence my request for a good lab, the implication being that I'm after a lab that uses decent developer and returns good negatives.

The printing is great fun, processing the negatives isn't, and I'm farming out the most mechanical part of the whole chemical process such that I can use precious time for the bit I enjoy.

I appreciate the process is important, but as I use the same film and dev (FP4 and HP5 in standard ilford film dev) I think the control I'd give up is minimal. I really do not have the time or inclination to try varying this, in fact the more 'standard' I can get it the better - I'm really not at the stage where I'd even consider varying a developer to get a different feel to an image.

If I felt I'd need to deviate from standard I could easily hand-dev, but for pretty much all intents and purposes a decent development in standard developer would be ideal. That's pretty much all I do anyway.

Many thanks, I'll give them a go.

It depends what you mean by a standard developer, as there isn't really such as beast. I'm not suggesting that you change developers to suit the occasion but rather that you would settle on a combination that suited your style.

An example - my favourite combination is Kodak Tri-X deveoped in Paterson FX-39. This gives very crisp grain structure that suits the gritty prints I like to make.

If I wanted ultra fine grain I would use perhaps Paterson Aculux, but this would be at the slight expense of edge sharpness.

A processing lab is likely to use a very high speed developer, maybe just 1 - 1.5 minutes development at most. What the effect of this might be is unknown without quizzing them about their precise method.

The development is so fundamental that it would seem a shame to give up that control. You will make more headway more quickly if you develop for yourself.

If you don't want to though that's another matter altogether.

Many thanks for reply John, most prompt!

By 'standard' developer, I meant something other than particularly fine grain or focused upon certain film types (e.g. for the delta films etc.)

My position is that I'm happy to try a number of labs to see which negs seem both consistent and of a reasonable standard. I'm not so fussed by the specifics of the chemicals used, if the results are unsatisfactory they're unsatisfactory and I'll try somewhere else. As it stands, I have maybe a few hours a week for printing, of which I lose about half to developing negatives. This, I'm afraid, cannot continue and this is the only way I can see to address the issue.

The difficulties of balancing pragmatism and idealism.

I've never got a satisfactory result from any lab. I now use a professional hand printer. There are still some around.

Ken

I should clarify, I'm not refering to the printing (the bit I want to spend more time on) but to the neg development. For what it's worth, I've only ever paid for prints from slides and I actually found the Jessops hand priting (I think ectachrome or simething?) to be pretty good. Black and white I always do myself, for better or worse. Good fun though.

Mattie : I will try to send you a PM with details of my hand developing service - need the work !

Mattie, I fully understood your post. My printer develops my films. I now use B+W infrequently enough to make it financially impractical to maintain fresh chemicals. I must say that I've never found 10.5 minutes developing a film to be much of a chore; certainly not when compared to wasting £££s on paper trying to get a decent print.

As other posters here have said, neg development is crucial to the final image!!!

Ken

It takes me well over an hour to get all the kit out, get the darkbag ready, load it all up, mix the chems, wait for the temp to stabilise (can take a while) do the dev, rinse the negs, wash and dry everything up etc. I have a print processor which is instantaneously ready to go for the prints, I have no equivalent for the negs, hence devving the negs takes a disproportionate amount of time. I don't mind the wasted time on prints, that's the bit I actually enjoy!

I entirely agree that good negs are critical, I strongly disagree that labs are incapable of delivering these, which is what seems to be implied in many posts here. It's the most mechanical part of the whole process, there's really not a lot to get wrong. Labs do a perfectly reasonable job with my C41 and E6, I see no reason why they can't do a good job on my b&w negs.

Received with thanks Peter!