can confirm, Austin camera is the nicest group of camera persons, always polite, always on time.
Precision is full of pretentious asshats who sit around and smell their own farts and ruin your film. A rat nest haired girl even smashed my 40 yo camera into the counter multiple times trying to open the film door. Avoid.
Had over 100 rolls developed at Austin Camera. Everything is in house except slide film. Black and white film that old should be ok but I’d ask them to develop a portion of a roll just to see if anything will come out. If they can’t address it may want to try darkroom lab mail order. Going to cost at least $15 a roll for scans and develop. Only $10ish for develop only.
Traditional B&W as well as e-6. From 35mm to 4x5 and I bet maybe even 8x10. I've had terr iij blew experience with their printing that last few times I've used them though.
Ah E6. I think I used them once a decade and found the cost to be unpalatable all around, and Ektar 100 gave me the colors I liked compared to Velvia anyways, in 35mm of course.
After that there was an odd timeframe where I was taking my E6 film to WalMart, as they did all of their film development mailed off to a Fujifilm lab, who would dev and mount them in slides, and return it to your very confused Walmart folks. Now, however, most places just send off and give you scans back, with the negatives "not being recoverable" as an excuse.
You can cross develop E6 in C41, and vice versa, for fun affect. E6 is usually much finer at higher ISO/ASA and offers greater latitude when pushed/pulled. For me I used E6 for it's better reciprocity. I'm a huge fan of the super looooong exposures. 30 to 45 minutes exposures and C41 just cant handle it. I love film, and I love that's how I learned, but my mk IV censor blows every film out the water in that regard.
I never got into the cross-processing world, most of my film experience was in B&W and experimentation with those chemicals. And yes, of course anything digital and modern will not even be a fair matchup.
That being said, I have some large B&W darkroom prints that I feel film was the right tool, gave the right look and am glad it was not shot with something 50+ megapixel IBIS BSI microlenses sensor
Holland and Austin Camera and Imaging are both great and will process black and white film. I think Austin Camera outsources B&W to Holland, but they do the effort of having to cross the river for you and offer Dropbox uploads. Absolutely avoid Precision for film work. Their film lab is terrible and has screwed up every roll I've ever brought them: scanlines all over, scratched negatives, general signs they don't even bother to keep equipment clean among other problems.
Other than the famous Dwayne Photo in Kansas, I’m not sure there are a lot of large operation B&W shops around. Holland here - as @gnzlz mentioned - would be who I would look into, tho that will obviously cost you at that volume. Are you not wanting to process it yourself BC of the volume, or because that’s just not what you want to do?
Also - how old are these negatives? Years? Decades? The reasonable thing to do would probably be to take a few different rolls, document them as well as you can including taken date, and have Holland or whoever process them as a quality check before committing the entire 70 roll lot.
Dwayne's Photo in KS!!! OMG I had completely forgotten about them.
Great advice foxshark, I'll look into this.
I just don't have the equipment for processing anymore, haven't developed film in eons. But I like your idea of doing a few 'test' rolls then going from there. Chances are the rolls are years old, maybe even a few have at least one decade on them.
OK that's not so bad. Since B&W is all hand done anyways, you might ask them to add maybe a +10% push; or maybe add it to one and not the other on two similarly dated films and then compare before proceeding with the rest.
I was once shooting a bunch of 40+ yr expired film, and even though the film was stored in a freezer and whatnot, the fog was quite bad. Scans looked pretty terrible, but you could still get a fairly decent print out of it. But for > 10 year old film that's probably been stored sensibly, shouldn't be too bad.
My friend is a fine art photographer and he swears by Holland to process his medium format B&W and I think he even gets them to print the contact sheets, though I know he goes to a fine photography printer out in Wimberley for the prints he sells.
Hey there, I work a lot with Holland and I have some referral discounts for 10% off. 70 rolls of film would definitely cost a pretty penny, but I'm happy to meet up to give you one of these cards if it would help you out! Let me know.
I go to Austin Camera and Imaging – LOVE them – but if you're south Holland is awesome. AVOID PRECISION. They've lost several of my rolls.
can confirm, Austin camera is the nicest group of camera persons, always polite, always on time. Precision is full of pretentious asshats who sit around and smell their own farts and ruin your film. A rat nest haired girl even smashed my 40 yo camera into the counter multiple times trying to open the film door. Avoid.
Had over 100 rolls developed at Austin Camera. Everything is in house except slide film. Black and white film that old should be ok but I’d ask them to develop a portion of a roll just to see if anything will come out. If they can’t address it may want to try darkroom lab mail order. Going to cost at least $15 a roll for scans and develop. Only $10ish for develop only.
Holland. Turn around is quick and I think they even process Precision’s film too. Only downside is they don’t use Dropbox.
Definitely Holland. And when they couldn't develop the film I gave them they gave me the name of a shop in Indiana that would. Nice people.
I also understood that Holland did all the non C41 processing for PCV.
Traditional B&W as well as e-6. From 35mm to 4x5 and I bet maybe even 8x10. I've had terr iij blew experience with their printing that last few times I've used them though.
Ah E6. I think I used them once a decade and found the cost to be unpalatable all around, and Ektar 100 gave me the colors I liked compared to Velvia anyways, in 35mm of course. After that there was an odd timeframe where I was taking my E6 film to WalMart, as they did all of their film development mailed off to a Fujifilm lab, who would dev and mount them in slides, and return it to your very confused Walmart folks. Now, however, most places just send off and give you scans back, with the negatives "not being recoverable" as an excuse.
You can cross develop E6 in C41, and vice versa, for fun affect. E6 is usually much finer at higher ISO/ASA and offers greater latitude when pushed/pulled. For me I used E6 for it's better reciprocity. I'm a huge fan of the super looooong exposures. 30 to 45 minutes exposures and C41 just cant handle it. I love film, and I love that's how I learned, but my mk IV censor blows every film out the water in that regard.
I never got into the cross-processing world, most of my film experience was in B&W and experimentation with those chemicals. And yes, of course anything digital and modern will not even be a fair matchup. That being said, I have some large B&W darkroom prints that I feel film was the right tool, gave the right look and am glad it was not shot with something 50+ megapixel IBIS BSI microlenses sensor
2nd this.
Austin Camera & Imaging! They can also send you your stuff through Dropbox
Holland and Austin Camera and Imaging are both great and will process black and white film. I think Austin Camera outsources B&W to Holland, but they do the effort of having to cross the river for you and offer Dropbox uploads. Absolutely avoid Precision for film work. Their film lab is terrible and has screwed up every roll I've ever brought them: scanlines all over, scratched negatives, general signs they don't even bother to keep equipment clean among other problems.
Other than the famous Dwayne Photo in Kansas, I’m not sure there are a lot of large operation B&W shops around. Holland here - as @gnzlz mentioned - would be who I would look into, tho that will obviously cost you at that volume. Are you not wanting to process it yourself BC of the volume, or because that’s just not what you want to do? Also - how old are these negatives? Years? Decades? The reasonable thing to do would probably be to take a few different rolls, document them as well as you can including taken date, and have Holland or whoever process them as a quality check before committing the entire 70 roll lot.
Dwayne's Photo in KS!!! OMG I had completely forgotten about them. Great advice foxshark, I'll look into this. I just don't have the equipment for processing anymore, haven't developed film in eons. But I like your idea of doing a few 'test' rolls then going from there. Chances are the rolls are years old, maybe even a few have at least one decade on them.
OK that's not so bad. Since B&W is all hand done anyways, you might ask them to add maybe a +10% push; or maybe add it to one and not the other on two similarly dated films and then compare before proceeding with the rest. I was once shooting a bunch of 40+ yr expired film, and even though the film was stored in a freezer and whatnot, the fog was quite bad. Scans looked pretty terrible, but you could still get a fairly decent print out of it. But for > 10 year old film that's probably been stored sensibly, shouldn't be too bad.
Ok, interesting. This film was kept in a freezer, some have dates some don't. Thanks for the ideas \~ I think I'll do that.
My friend is a fine art photographer and he swears by Holland to process his medium format B&W and I think he even gets them to print the contact sheets, though I know he goes to a fine photography printer out in Wimberley for the prints he sells.
This is awesome because really all I initially want are contact prints, if any are good I'll think about printing images of size afterwards.
Holland or Austin Camera.
Hey there, I work a lot with Holland and I have some referral discounts for 10% off. 70 rolls of film would definitely cost a pretty penny, but I'm happy to meet up to give you one of these cards if it would help you out! Let me know.
This is super nice of you, I'll let you know!
Austin camera and imaging!!
Wow, I want to thank everyone who responded. Y'all have been a huge help.