HELP! - film processing in Toronto (and elsewhere)

[QDIEM4SC]

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Hi everybody,

 

I just purchased an M3 and it is currently undergoing a CLA. As I've been waiting for its return, I have had the slow realization that I've no idea what I've gotten myself into.

My goal is this: shoot black and white film only (like Kodak TriX 400).

 

...but I love "processing" images on my laptop so that I have ultimate control.

 

 

So, my questions...

 

For people that may live in Toronto, Canada--where do you process your 35mm B&W film? And, do you have it professionally scanned? Do you scan with Nikon Coolscan? What's better (ie. what's shows off the qualities of the film better?).

 

I'm looking to have ultimate creative control, and ideally not to have to hand over the film to a store (i.e. scan the images at home and "process" on the computer). But, I have this fear that the images will degrade significantly with this process, or that it will be as cumbersome as relying on a lab.

 

So many questions, I know. My apologies, but I'm in completely new territory.

 

Peter.

[earleygallery]

Easy, process and scan yourself.

 

The 'latest' snag is the lack of scanners on the market. You might find a Nikon (buy it if you do and can afford it) or alternatively the top end Epson flatbed does a good job but isn't as convenient to use, although it's more versatile of course.

[QDIEM4SC]

Easy, process and scan yourself.

 

The 'latest' snag is the lack of scanners on the market. You might find a Nikon (buy it if you do and can afford it) or alternatively the top end Epson flatbed does a good job but isn't as convenient to use, although it's more versatile of course.

 

James, thanks, but I'd rather not have to process myself---I know, I know, I'm being picky.

 

How would a Nikon Coolscan 5000 compare to, say, a pro lab for scanning? I've searched this forum but haven't found direct comparisons.

 

Thanks again,

 

Peter.

[earleygallery]

Really I would urge you to reconsider, you will process a roll of film in about 15mins, that's lots less hassle than a trip to a lab (or postbox even!). If you can make a cocktail, or a pasta sauce, then you can develop film!

 

Scans from labs are so variable. Even pro lab 'high res' scans aren't always that high res. You would need to see what services are available locally and be very specific about what you require when you deal with the lab.

[Joachim123]

I shoot exclusively slides, both medium format and 35mm All my processing is done at Silvanos. They are quick and consistent in their quality. They also do Black and White.

 

Color and B&W Film Processing - Silvano Imaging (We Still Process Film)

[QDIEM4SC]

I shoot exclusively slides, both medium format and 35mm All my processing is done at Silvanos. They are quick and consistent in their quality. They also do Black and White.

 

Color and B&W Film Processing - Silvano Imaging (We Still Process Film)

 

Thanks Joachim, I never heard of them. They are conveniently located close to where my in-laws live. Hmmm....

 

Any comment regarding how they compare vs. home scanning with the Coolscan 5000?

 

Thanks again,

 

Peter.

[QDIEM4SC]

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Really I would urge you to reconsider, you will process a roll of film in about 15mins, that's lots less hassle than a trip to a lab (or postbox even!). If you can make a cocktail, or a pasta sauce, then you can develop film!

 

Scans from labs are so variable. Even pro lab 'high res' scans aren't always that high res. You would need to see what services are available locally and be very specific about what you require when you deal with the lab.

 

 

Well, I can make pasta sauce, that's for sure! I keep hearing how easy this process is for black and white film... it makes me think that perhaps I should look into this. Thanks.

[Joachim123]

I dont know anything about scanning. However, I would give them a small job and see how they do. I wanted to participate in the Kodachrome contest then have the slides developed by Duane's and scanned at Silvanos, however, I could not get any Kodachrome in time.

 

I will be visiting Virginia next week and once I have the slides back I will get them to scan a few and post them. Lets see how they turn out.

[firststream]

Peter - All the professional photographers I know use Silvanos. I'll be using them for my Hassey colour negs, but I haven't arrived there yet.

Also, I second the recommendation of the Epson scanners (I'm happy with my 700).

I've seen your tomato sauce - it'll be a cinch for you to handle at-home BW development!

 

Jeff H.

[QDIEM4SC]

Peter - All the professional photographers I know use Silvanos. I'll be using them for my Hassey colour negs, but I haven't arrived there yet.

Also, I second the recommendation of the Epson scanners (I'm happy with my 700).

I've seen your tomato sauce - it'll be a cinch for you to handle at-home BW development!

 

Jeff H.

 

Ha! If you're talking about this tomato sauce (see below), then that's my mother-in-law's work, so I can't take credit for it.

 

I really should check out Silvano's, thanks.

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[firststream]

Then maybe she could do your neg work...

[underground]

Then maybe she could do your neg work...

 

hehehehe!

[LKeithR]

Peter,

 

Another thing to consider is the C-41 process films from Kodak, Ilford and Fuji. Kodak's is called BW400CN, Ilford labels theirs XP2 Super and Fuji dubs theirs Neopan 400CN. I've not used any of them but I've seen some nice results from XP2. I believe it prints the best on true B&W paper.

 

As for scanning, I have an Epson V750 pro and I'm more than happy with the results I get. I bought it because I have several boxes of old family photos to scan (some day) and, of course, I needed the flatbed for it's versatility. I do believe that the Coolscans will produce somewhat better results but they are more money and not as versatile. If you're going to PP the images you probably wouldn't notice much difference. If you wanted to send me a few negs I'd be happy scan them for you with the 750 and give you an idea of what it can do.

 

I keep thinking I should find myself a cheap film camera but so far I've resisted the urge. And I just found out I/ve won a Digilux 2 on eBay so that's it for my camera budget for a while anyway...

[Nando]

Well, I can make pasta sauce, that's for sure! I keep hearing how easy this process is for black and white film... it makes me think that perhaps I should look into this. Thanks.

 

You'll pay through the nose if get a lab to process your black and white film. Learn to do it yourself. It is easy! A bottle of Rodinal or HC-110 that are a bit over $10 is good for many rolls. If you would like to shoot Tri-X, developing in HC-110 is almost a sure thing. It would be extremely hard to screw up with that combo.

 

You say that you like to process images on your laptop for ultimate control. If you want ultimate control, you need to both process and scan yourself.

 

I process my film and scan with a Nikon Coolscan V. I very much recommend this scanner if you can find one. Its good, reliable and get very nice scans with it using Vuescan.

 

Edit: if processing yourself is not an option, I recommend Toronto Image Works on the corner of Spadina near King.

[QDIEM4SC]

Nando and LKeithR,

 

Thanks for the great information and thanks for the generous offer LKeithR. Nando, I actually know about Toronto Image Works and keep them in the back of my mind, though I think cost will become prohibitive if I rely on them for all of my processing. Again, doing it myself seems like a more realistic option.

 

At this point, this is all academic, because my newly-acquired M3 has been undergoing a CLA and is in the capable hands of Gerry at Kindermann in Markham. I discovered him through some previous posts in this forum and I have to say, he is a gem of a human being.

 

I can't wait to get the camera back, and to start putting some of the advice here into practice.

 

Thanks again everybody,

 

Peter.

[4X5B&W]

Peter, you might want to try Toronto B&W on River Street, they not only process (develop only, or with proof sheets, or prints) but can also do scanning. Usually one day turn around.

 

David K.

[dgj]

I made a similar search in Toronto a few months ago. I wanted to gain the experience of taking photographs on film but with the idea of popping out the exposed film canister and then with the minimum of cost and effort have all the frames on the computer.

 

I tried developing/processing and also negative scanning at Toronto Image Works, Downtown Camera, and a number of smaller photography stores such as Annex Photo. I wasn't aware of Silvanos then.

 

On the developing front I found that I could only get consistently acceptable results from TIW. Every other place would quite often return the negatives with excessive dust and scratches on them, and for BW with water stains. No significant issues with TIW, they also have same day turn around and push processing. You get 10% off if you pay up front. Downtown Camera BW development started off fine however progressively got worse over time, not sure if I was unlucky, however the result weren't consistent and also incurred a weeks delay.

 

At this stage I develop BW films myself, and take in C41 and E6 films to TIW. It turns out that developing BW films is straightforward. Even my first attempt produced better results than some of the stores. There is lots of advice and instructions on this site and the rest of the net for how to do this: YouTube has some good videos to lead you through it, steaming out the bathroom to reduce dust works, and the changing bag is often fun. It cost me a few hundreds dollars to get going, and now takes me an hour from start to developing, to washing and tidying up. The only issue for me is that I still haven't consistently sorted out the water spotting problem.

 

Scanning is more problematic. I think the root problem is that a good scan of an entire roll of 35mm at a reasonable quality seems to take too long for it to make commercial sense. Though the prices for individual frames seem reasonable, the desire to make that jump straight from camera to computer just means you have to scan the whole roll rather than pluck out a few promising or validated frames. I tried the cheap and "high quality" scans of all the places. The cheaper JPG scans were simply terrible, with low resolution, only 8bit colour, and for colour films too saturated. Even the $20 scans simply weren't good enough to capture the dynamic range of BW film or the level of detail on fine films. Though my main interest in film was for the experience of the direct approach to picture taking with the older manual cameras, I had little appetite to lose much of the quality of the negative during the scanning process.

 

This lead me to scanning the images myself. I use a Nikon 500 with Vuescan. The setup is such to minimize data lost through white and black points and from colour space limitations. I've followed the instructions online so that the supplied negative feeder can scan an entire roll in one session, so it now 20 mins to sample the first few images and then it can be left for another 4 - 6 hours overnight to automatically scan the rest of the roll. In the morning there are 5gb of images files ready for viewing.

 

So the original plan for an effortless approach for digitising from film hasn't gone according to plan and rather become a maddeningly expensive adventure. However now I have the process setup the results are reasonable, it takes an acceptable amount of time per roll, and isn't stressful to run through. So I'm back to enjoying taking pictures on film, which after all is what I wanted to do in the first place.

 

David Jones

[QDIEM4SC]

I made a similar search in Toronto a few months ago. I wanted to gain the experience of taking photographs on film but with the idea of popping out the exposed film canister and then with the minimum of cost and effort have all the frames on the computer.

 

I tried developing/processing and also negative scanning at Toronto Image Works, Downtown Camera, and a number of smaller photography stores such as Annex Photo. I wasn't aware of Silvanos then.

 

On the developing front I found that I could only get consistently acceptable results from TIW. Every other place would quite often return the negatives with excessive dust and scratches on them, and for BW with water stains. No significant issues with TIW, they also have same day turn around and push processing. You get 10% off if you pay up front. Downtown Camera BW development started off fine however progressively got worse over time, not sure if I was unlucky, however the result weren't consistent and also incurred a weeks delay.

 

At this stage I develop BW films myself, and take in C41 and E6 films to TIW. It turns out that developing BW films is straightforward. Even my first attempt produced better results than some of the stores. There is lots of advice and instructions on this site and the rest of the net for how to do this: YouTube has some good videos to lead you through it, steaming out the bathroom to reduce dust works, and the changing bag is often fun. It cost me a few hundreds dollars to get going, and now takes me an hour from start to developing, to washing and tidying up. The only issue for me is that I still haven't consistently sorted out the water spotting problem.

 

Scanning is more problematic. I think the root problem is that a good scan of an entire roll of 35mm at a reasonable quality seems to take too long for it to make commercial sense. Though the prices for individual frames seem reasonable, the desire to make that jump straight from camera to computer just means you have to scan the whole roll rather than pluck out a few promising or validated frames. I tried the cheap and "high quality" scans of all the places. The cheaper JPG scans were simply terrible, with low resolution, only 8bit colour, and for colour films too saturated. Even the $20 scans simply weren't good enough to capture the dynamic range of BW film or the level of detail on fine films. Though my main interest in film was for the experience of the direct approach to picture taking with the older manual cameras, I had little appetite to lose much of the quality of the negative during the scanning process.

 

This lead me to scanning the images myself. I use a Nikon 500 with Vuescan. The setup is such to minimize data lost through white and black points and from colour space limitations. I've followed the instructions online so that the supplied negative feeder can scan an entire roll in one session, so it now 20 mins to sample the first few images and then it can be left for another 4 - 6 hours overnight to automatically scan the rest of the roll. In the morning there are 5gb of images files ready for viewing.

 

So the original plan for an effortless approach for digitising from film hasn't gone according to plan and rather become a maddeningly expensive adventure. However now I have the process setup the results are reasonable, it takes an acceptable amount of time per roll, and isn't stressful to run through. So I'm back to enjoying taking pictures on film, which after all is what I wanted to do in the first place.

 

David Jones

 

David,

 

That was a wonderfully detailed report, and I thank you for taking the time to share this information. Admittedly, all of this is a little daunting.

 

I have yet to receive my CLA'd M3 (but should get it this week), so I haven't implemented any of the advice I have received here.

 

Sorry for the late reply, I didn't realize people were still responding to this thread.

 

Peter.

[QDIEM4SC]

Peter, you might want to try Toronto B&W on River Street, they not only process (develop only, or with proof sheets, or prints) but can also do scanning. Usually one day turn around.

 

David K.

 

Thanks David, I will have to add them to the list of places mentioned here.

 

Thanks again,

 

Peter.

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[R.Morrison]

Thanx all:

For providing names and locations in Toronto of the various labs. I have moved from Iqaluit to the Northumberland Hills (a photographic wasteland with respect to labs) and am a short hike into Hogg Town. Residents of North Yorkshire, England would note with amusement the names of the towns along Hwy. 2 as one approaches Toronto (once called York), Whitby, Pickering, Scarborough, until one arrives at the 'Yorks' (East York, NorthYork, Yorkville, York Region).

But I digress. Yes, there's little excuse for not developing one's own B&W film, spaghetti sauce, wine or pickles but do be wary of C41 B&W done by labs. I visited a C41 lab one day and witnessed a young lassie traversing the lab with uncut neg. strips clutched in one hand and trailing behind her on the floor!

'nuff said,

R. Morrison