Film processing question

[Gary Schulz]

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Apologies if this topic has been beat to death and forgive the newby question, but I am wanting to get my first roll of 35mm color film developed and printed (first in maybe 35 years).  I was wondering if labs develop the negatives and then scan them and print them on digital printers or is it still possible to have prints made via a photographic process with no digitization/scanning involved?

 

I really would like to get this roll printed on genuine photographic paper and see the results without introducing additional scanning/pixelating back into the process.

 

Is this still possible, if so, who does it this way still?

 

Gary

[oldwino]

As far as I know, everything is scanned these days. I do believe some labs offer prints on proper photographic paper, but everything seems to start with a scan.

I know that Blue Moon in Portland do make enlarger prints from negatives, but I think that would get expensive for a whole roll. 
 

 

[spydrxx]

I am sure there are still a few professional labs which could accommodate you, ones which cater almost exclusively to the advertising industry. Expect to pay a fortune though if you use them in line with your stated desires. I haven't used one in years, so I'm not certain who is still in business, but hopefully somebody who has can point you in the right direction. You might check with Dwayne's on the lower end.

[Gary Schulz]

So if labs universally scan the negatives (which is a lossy process) and then use digital printers for making prints why do we use old 35mm cameras given the results are "quantized" to exhibit similar results to digital cameras?  This seems a bit disappointing.

 

Yes, of course, I could fairly readily do my own B&W development and printing but I already have too many hobbies!

 

Sort of a rhetorical question but maybe not entirely...

Edited July 19 by Gary Schulz

[105012]

In my extensive home lab I complete a fully analogue process from capture to paper, and the results are significantly better than scanning, so I understand the question of the OP. 

Nevertheless, the scanned result is still better, in my opinion, than digital sensors (again, I know many will have a different view), so there is at least one reason to use film and scan.

Another reason for scanning, assuming you prefer film, is for a digital contact sheet and organisational purposes, aiding in the selection of which frames to print and in filing.
 

All my personal views and not about ‘right’ or ‘wrong’, I hasten to add 😀.

Edited July 20 by 105012

[prioritet]

Come to Siberia with us, we have at least two laboratories in Novosibirsk where you can develop any film yourself and get a wet print.

[250swb]

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12 hours ago, Gary Schulz said:

So if labs universally scan the negatives (which is a lossy process) and then use digital printers for making prints why do we use old 35mm cameras given the results are "quantized" to exhibit similar results to digital cameras?  This seems a bit disappointing.

 

Because it doesn't. You've started with an ill informed preconception. You'll not see any difference between an average lab scanned negative and inkjet print and a 'wet' print  up to 16x20, and then it depends on the quality of the scan in terms of pixels and more pixels means the size can be bigger. And the scan will look like the wet print because it's just a copy of the negative and should there be a pixel on show you'll have a hard time finding it because the films grain will be twenty times as big and swamp it. 

There is no 'pure' way of getting a colour print in a darkroom unless you do it yourself, labs scan negatives for colour information to feed that information into the enlarger that makes the exposure before the paper is feed into the print developing machine. And it's expensive nowadays because the demand is so low, many people process the film and scan and print at home, or just have the lab scan the film and produce a negative sheet. With a negative sheet you can choose the best photos to print and send either the digital negative to the lab or send the negatives themselves, so what you might have spent on 36 5x7 prints you can spend on one good 12x16.

The downside of simply wanting a 'pure' print from the lab is that the lab have no way of knowing what your expectations are, so if you are working at home with scanned negatives with the end result as an inkjet print you can boost the colour, the contrast, the brightness, etc. and make the image as you saw it in your minds eye. The film after all is a dumb medium and can't interpret the colours exactly as you saw them, and this is how the lab have to make prints as neutral as possible. But in a home darkroom you would/could alter these things

A 24mp full-frame digital camera is 'enough' to scan/copy a 35mm negative such that you can count the grain in the film, and that is why people scan/copy their negatives, there is now an alternative to a darkroom in which nothing is lost if done well. And inkjet printers have moved far beyond the days when you could count the ink droplets on the paper. The only indication a print has been made in a darkroom or a home printer nowadays is perhaps 'Fuji' printed on the back of the paper and the smell, 

 

Edited July 20 by 250swb

[Gary Schulz]

16 hours ago, 250swb said:

Because it doesn't. You've started with an ill informed preconception....

 

Well perhaps you have made my point for me.  My question is really why bother with film if the entire backend is digital anyway.  The only difference is how many pixels are being rendered at the source.  I also tried (apparently in vain) not to say that it was somehow ruining the resolution but rather that it would provide similar results.  I didn't refer to the quantization as being either above or below the Nyquist sampling criterion so that was definitely not my point.  My interest in resurrecting my old camera is to see results as they would have been presented "back in the day" rather than just provide some input into an oversampled digital stream.  That's why I was curious how the film is being handled these days.  I am not saying anyone is wrong or ill informed by not particularly caring how their film is processed as long as they are pleased with the results.

 

For me, there would be a small amount of gratification in knowing that the images my ancient camera produced (with me optimizing all the possible variables with exposure, focus et al) were then being processed and printed in the same way with the same results as the user had when the camera was new and relevant...

Is the new way better? Very likely, but then again it is very likely a digital camera with a full frame sensor is also far better than my uncle's old IIIc. 

[Einst_Stein]

I have experienced the time In the early stage of digital CD, many people swear the analog vinyl disc sounds much pure and better. In the even earlier stage when semiconductor stereo appears, many people swear the vacuum tube hifi is better and pure. The preference of full analog film and print vs digital direct and film with digital post processing sounds very similar.  

The quantization property and digital sampling property of any process that involves digital steps could indeed reveal the distinct difference from the partial or complete analog process, but with today’s common sense digital sensor, the sensor’s resolution and bit depth would be hardly visible. Unless, you are printing super large prints. 

Some young people who prefer film photography that I know, are actually chasing for the weird unfaithful tonal appearance of crappy cheaply photo labs that could not offer professional quality prints. Much like those who prefer Polaroid colors.

[250swb]

6 hours ago, Gary Schulz said:

Well perhaps you have made my point for me.  My question is really why bother with film if the entire backend is digital anyway.  The only difference is how many pixels are being rendered at the source.  I also tried (apparently in vain) not to say that it was somehow ruining the resolution but rather that it would provide similar results.  I didn't refer to the quantization as being either above or below the Nyquist sampling criterion so that was definitely not my point.  My interest in resurrecting my old camera is to see results as they would have been presented "back in the day" rather than just provide some input into an oversampled digital stream.  That's why I was curious how the film is being handled these days.  I am not saying anyone is wrong or ill informed by not particularly caring how their film is processed as long as they are pleased with the results.

 

For me, there would be a small amount of gratification in knowing that the images my ancient camera produced (with me optimizing all the possible variables with exposure, focus et al) were then being processed and printed in the same way with the same results as the user had when the camera was new and relevant...

Is the new way better? Very likely, but then again it is very likely a digital camera with a full frame sensor is also far better than my uncle's old IIIc. 

An image made on film still looks like a film image after scanning and printing with an inkjet printer, it does not become a digital image or something else. Photographs made with film have traditionally been projected onto screens, wired across continents, printed with dots as a half-tone in a newspaper, and at no point has the medium become the source, it is not a screen image, it is not an electric image, it is not a half-tone, it is not an enlarger image, it is not an Agfa Record Rapid image, they are all film images made using another medium to render that image. So why tie yourself in knots just because another means of rendering a film image has appeared on the scene?

 

[LocalHero1953]

Film responds to light (of different colours and different intensities) in a different way from digital. At the most basic, a negative is more likely to block shadows, and a digital sensor is more likely to blow highlights (it is easy to recover shadows in digital images, but film gives you better skies). Film is more sensitive to the blue end of the spectrum and digital is more sensitive to the red end. Of course these differences are compensated for in both analogue printing and digital processing, and you can make adjustments to the scanned image to make film look like digital and vice versa. But those differences are there.

If you are hankering back to the good old days when you sent your exposed roll to a lab and received back the negatives and a stack of enprints - I can't remember ever (ever) receiving back analogue prints I was happy with. They were effectively my contact sheet from which I selected a small number for enlargement. These days I don't ask for scans from the labs - just the developed negatives. That way I can scan them to the standard I look for, and edit them to how I want them to look.

[BernardC]

10 hours ago, Gary Schulz said:

My interest in resurrecting my old camera is to see results as they would have been presented "back in the day" rather than just provide some input into an oversampled digital stream.  That's why I was curious how the film is being handled these days.  I am not saying anyone is wrong or ill informed by not particularly caring how their film is processed as long as they are pleased with the results.

The irony is that digital processing is the only way to get a look that approaches what you would have seen "back in the day."

You can't reproduce the look of Kodacolor II, as printed by your local Fotomat or chemists, using modern materials. You can however find software that tries to reproduce that look, but the results aren't be quite the same. Time marches on, as it always has.

Even high-quality processes from the past are almost impossible to reproduce with modern film/chemistry/papers. 

That's not to say that modern processes are bad. They are just different.

[Gary Schulz]

3 hours ago, BernardC said:

The irony is that digital processing is the only way to get a look that approaches what you would have seen "back in the day."

You can't reproduce the look of Kodacolor II, as printed by your local Fotomat or chemists, using modern materials. You can however find software that tries to reproduce that look, but the results aren't be quite the same. Time marches on, as it always has.

Even high-quality processes from the past are almost impossible to reproduce with modern film/chemistry/papers. 

That's not to say that modern processes are bad. They are just different.

I think your reply summarizes my point better than my own posts!  I am not trying to get defenses up and I am not saying there is anything particularly wrong with the way things are being done in the digital domain today.  My point is only that I wanted to see if I could just recreate the look and expectation that was the typical byproduct from the original processes (warts and all!)...

 

Based on everything I could read on this and other forums, I developed an impression that the entire back end is now scanned/digital and I was curious if my impression was correct and I also just wanted to know if there were places that just did chemical processing/enlargement....

My back ground is actually in electrical engineering and DSP so I get why scanning at high resolution can be just fine assuming the process doesn't result in aliasing artifacts and the possibility of Moire distortion etc...

 

I guess the basic answer to my question then is no, there is really nobody doing old-school chemistry/wet prints at this time.  Good to know!

 

Many thanks for the replies.

[BernardC]

13 minutes ago, Gary Schulz said:

I guess the basic answer to my question then is no, there is really nobody doing old-school chemistry/wet prints at this time.

I wouldn't rule that out entirely, but the Wikipedia page on minilabs states that the last "all-wet" minilabs went out of production a decade ago. Later minilabs do C41 film processing, scan the negs, and print them on RA4 or inkjet. 

I'm sure that there are still a few custom printers who use enlargers instead of scanners for colour (and probably more who do that for black and white), but you'll pay much higher rates than you would have at a "1 hour" lab in the 1990s.

[250swb]

4 hours ago, Gary Schulz said:

My point is only that I wanted to see if I could just recreate the look and expectation that was the typical byproduct from the original processes (warts and all!)..

But the byproduct of sending your film to an old school darkroom lab that used an enlarger and a printing machine are basically what we know as holiday snaps. It is recreated if you send your film for developing and printing in any modern lab, so what is the fascination with paying over the odds for ‘authentic’ quality holiday snaps when nobody could tell the difference between that and a digitally generated image? They are all just snaps made the cheapest way with the most automated process available.

Edited July 21 by 250swb

[Gary Schulz]

Many of the images captured by my uncle and father at the end of WW2 all the way through the 60's are amazing and not all "holiday snaps" as you seem fond of saying.  My uncle was involved in getting Leica back on its feet at the tail end of the war and I remain fascinated by the images from that time all the way through his excellent Kodachrome work later on.  Would all these images have been even better if someone was scanning them and using ink jet printers to render them, probably, but then again to further your point, they would have been better still if they were taken on a full frame high resolution digital camera as well....  

Just calling all this body of work holiday snaps almost seems a little disparaging. I suspect there is plenty of room in this hobby for all sorts of interests and everybody comes into it with a different history/background which is at least partially what makes it fun and rewarding.

 

Edited July 23 by Gary Schulz

[IkarusJohn]

I think the point that Steve was making is that scanning the negatives, and printing them with an inkjet printer does need to result in a “digitized” image you are concerned about; or put another way, there is nothng to be gained by finding an enlarger and dark room capable of wet printing your colour images.

For myself, I now scan everything, then print only the best using an inkjet printer.  Would any of those images be better wet printed?  Apart from come Cibachromes (which introduce an effect of their own), I doubt it.

Edited July 23 by IkarusJohn

[Gary Schulz]

Yes, but at no time did I say that they would somehow be worse if done digitally and I don't think I said anything would be better wet printed.  They could indeed be worse if not sampled properly (need to be sampled following the Nyquist-Shannon criterion) and aliasing artifacts were introduced or they gained Moire distortion etc.  If done properly, then not worse.  I used the term "pixelated" not as a Derogatory but as a redundant term for sampled which is just a definition.  

 

Not sure how this discussion became so circular around the justification for modern methods when I have absolutely no objection to it in the first place!

 

As I said before I think my question has been answered so all is good...

Edited July 23 by Gary Schulz

[IkarusJohn]

On 7/21/2025 at 12:32 PM, Gary Schulz said:

My question is really why bother with film if the entire backend is digital anyway.

Understood.  I guess we’re just trying to understand your issue.  Perhaps the quote above goes to the heart of the matter, and the answer to that is, if you start with film, then the digitization process of scanning and printing doesn’t need to detract from that (which we all assumed was your starting point).  Your print will still capture the look of film, if that’s what you want and provided you don’t mess about with the images too much.

Conversely, creating a film look with a purely digital process (including capture) actually isn’t that easy.  So, many of us persist with film.  It is the starting point - even in the days of film, a lot went on in the dark room.

As to your father’s negatives, I am in the same position -  I have many of my father’s slides dating from the 1950s, most in Kodachrome.  They’ve stood up well.  But, they are just a starting point in the image process.  I process them for the end result I want, and which I hope my father had imagined.

Film isn’t magical - it’s just another starting point, which many of us enjoy.

Edited July 23 by IkarusJohn

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[adan]

On 7/19/2025 at 1:14 PM, Gary Schulz said:

So if labs universally scan the negatives (which is a lossy process) and then use digital printers for making prints why do we use old 35mm cameras given the results are "quantized" to exhibit similar results to digital cameras?  This seems a bit disappointing.

Why on earth do you assume that film (or more accurately, the whole analog/chemical photo reproduction process) is not ALSO a "lossy process?"

You are shooting on what amounts to laboratory-grade Jello™, contaminated with silver crystals.

Gelatin itself (a colloid) diffuses (blurs) light. The crystals also bounce light around and introduced artifacts, both when being exposed, and later as "grain."

For color, you are shooting on (and through) multiple layers of the stuff, which are sensitized and/or filtered to each distinguish a specific color range. And contain dye cupler molecules (more stuff for the light to bounce around on) which eventually developer as dye clouds (a good word to describe their effect on resolution and other things).

When you enlarge the film image, you must pass it through a lens again (on a darkroom enlarger or a slide projector) And since there is no such thing as a "perfect" lens (MTF = 100% at any resolution), that degrades the image even more (it's "lossy" also).

Then the image falls on the photo paper - which has more layers of gelatin contaminated with silver crystals (and dye-couplers, or dyes (Ciba/Ilfochrome), for color paper). And through which the light must pass twice for viewing - in (to the white base) and then out again (back to your eye).

"Lossy" is not a film-vs-digital thing - it is a film AND digital thing.

Given that reality, the motto of my secondary school applies: Finis Origine Pendet - "The end depends upon the beginning." If you start with a roll of film, that is 95%+ of what makes film images different.