Walgreen's is now dead to me

[jmowreader]

Today I went out to do laundry and to get a roll of film developed. There's a Walgreen's near the laundromat and I've had quite a bit of film developed at Walgreen's, so I went there...

Now they ship the film out to be developed, and the envelope has a terrible notation on it: "Your negatives will not be returned." They scan it on a mini-lab scanner, burn the files to a CD then throw away your negatives...unfortunately, the negatives themselves are what I wanted.

I shall not darken their door again.

[northoftheborder]

1. That's not good news. Negatives last a long time, really longer than the photos developed from...

...them. I still have my old film camera, but where can you still buy film, much less have it processed? Does everyone throw away the negatives?

[jmowreader]

3. The Internet is your friend

Try http://www.freestylephoto.biz, http://www.glazersphoto.com, http://www.bandh.com, http://www.adorama.com, http://www.keh.com or http://www.amazon.com to buy film, and http://www.dwaynesphoto.com to have it processed.

I never heard of anyone who was serious about photography throwing the negs away.

[Major Nikon]

2. Back in my film days I used mostly mail order developers

It was very handy when you were on vacation because you simply dropped the film in a prepaid mailer and if you were lucky it would be waiting for you when you got back home.

[Stevenmarc]

4. Just had film developed today

I primarily use Vista but I'm not sure if they do mail order

http://vistaimaginggroup.com/lab-services/

They literally saved my butt with a roll that I screwed up on when I shot some 400 at 100 and did a 1 1/2 pull and it surprisingly didn't kill all of the contrast.

You also might try hooking up with a local school that teaches photography, they usually have someone that will develop for you.

[Sherman A1]

5. same here

they had a free deal last year at Christmas and I wanted to get a photo of a co-workers 3 year old done as a little extra gift for her. Sent it digitally online, they first cropped off the top of her head and when I complained the counter person pretty much blew me off. Taking my complaint to their FB page and returning to the store to talk with the photo manager, they did correct the cropping, but the colors were off so bad, I will never use them again.

I believe that they can actually do a fair job on 4x6's and they are inexpensive and generally rather quick, but anything beyond that is probably best to go elsewhere.

I tried our local camera chain Creve Couer Camera and was disappointed with them as well. Tried WhiteWall, but found they process in Germany and while the prints I tried were very nice, it's a long trip from there to the US Midwest.

I now use Adorama for my prints but will be checking with a few others from photo magazine ads to see what they can do, however Adorama has a great turnaround time and I am pleased with their products.

[jmowreader]

9. I like their wide-format inkjet prints

Last year at Christmastime I made some 16x20 prints at Walgreen's...they looked good.

[northoftheborder]

6. I have a question - while this topic is at the moment current ----

One of my big projects looming ahead is the sorting, cataloging, copying to disc, copying to paper a huge volume of our family photos, several generations. If I don't do it, no one else will. I'm sure many are duplicates, or poor quality not to be saved, but many I will want to copy or save in as many formats as possible.

Many of the early color photographs have faded. The negatives, it seems from casual inspection, look OK. Most I will try to transfer to digital. But, some special ones I would like to have copied onto photo paper. In the "olden" days of film photography I would go into the local drugstore and fill out my order form for copies, writing down the numbers which were on the negatives to be reprinted. Do these mail-order developers deal with such tedious requests? Of course I would have to test out the quality of the negative color remaining on a few before ordering many. I have to do this myself, too expensive to have someone else do it.

Any advice as to this effort would be appreciated. It's amazing how vivid and clear the oldest black and white photos made on primitive box cameras are. Perhaps some of the newer color photos should be copied in black and white to really preserve.

[alfredo]

8. This might work for the negatives.

Links are not endorsements for Amazon.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00GIDADP0/ref=wl_it_dp_o_pC_nS_ttl?_encoding=UTF8&colid=1OUQ3Y23EAION&coliid=I26IPKYYDVOD84



Or

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B002OEBMRU/ref=wl_it_dp_o_pC_nS_ttl?_encoding=UTF8&colid=1OUQ3Y23EAION&coliid=I37H76CDMM4NS0

[jmowreader]

10. I have three scanners already

When I first shoot a roll of 35, I first run it through one of these:



This little Minolta works quickly and gives halfway decent images.

A roll of 120 goes through the Epson V500 flatbed you depicted in your second photo.

I use those scans as digital contact sheets: quick and dirty so I can see what's going on. I'd still use slide film if it wasn't priced out of the market.

When I decide on the pictures I want to use, I take them to this:



(That's not me - I have no beard and I have better sense than to support a hundred-pound scanner between two 2x2s screwed to the wall, but that is the scanner I have)

[alfredo]

12. I've been photographing my slides. I made a light table made from a salvaged Epson slide

scanner light. Extension tubes and my tripod completes the setup.

These are either Ugandan or Tanzanian women.


This is Massawa road. From Asmara to Massawa the road drops 8,500ft to the Red Sea port city of Massawa. There are 1,022 curves from my residence to Massawa. I think I developed this slide.

[csziggy]

13. The Epson Photo Scanners are pretty good

While I have a couple of dedicated slide/negative scanners, they can only handle 35mm film.

I bought an Epson V500, the step down from the V600 you linked to and it does as good or better a job than my older dedicated scanners without the hassle of having yet another scanner on the desk. In addition, the V500 can do medium format negatives. Since I have a large number of 100 year old medium format negatives, it was a good investment.

The best prices I have found for Epson scanners is directly from Epson. They sell refurbished units for really good prices with free shipping. For instance, the V600 from Epson is currently $145 with free shipping while the link at Amazon has it at over $200.

[alfredo]

15. Thank you.

[jmowreader]

16. Buy a copy of VueScan for it

http://www.hamrick.com

You'll get a lot better scans out of VueScan than you will from the standard Epson driver.

There's also Silverfast, but they want $300 for it.

[csziggy]

17. Already have it - VueScan is awesome!

For one thing - the Epson software does not allow you to scan the total size of the backlit area for negatives. With some of the antique negatives I'm scanning, this would mean scanning in as many as four different parts, then pasting the images together. With Vuescan, I can scan the entire backlit area so for most of the old negatives it only takes one scan and no pasting. I do have a very few that are wider than the backlit area on my V500 but even so Vuescan reduces the scans to two parts that have to be assembled to make the complete image.

Vuescan does a superior job with defined negative types, too. The Epson software has no definitions for different films and their corrections are pretty basic.

I have Silverfast for one of my dedicated slide scanners - a crippled version came with the scanner - but I have not been as pleased with it as I have been with Vuescan, especially considering the price they want to get the full version. I got Vuescan for that scanner before I got the Epson. That's how I could test the Epson to make sure it was able to scan the entire backlit area and found it is just a software limitation with the abysmal Epson software.

[jmowreader]

18. How large are these negatives?

Strange thing: I never noticed a huge amount of difference between the different negative settings in VueScan, so when I use it to proof some film I just leave it set to one of the Kodak channels. My Dainippon Screen scanner's pretty much the same way: the "Kodak Ektar 100" channel (which was written fifteen years before the current version of Ektar 100 was introduced, and what the fuck is up with that?) seems to work well for any film I throw at it, so I just leave it there.

[alfredo]

7. Damn, that sucks. The discs are of a proprietary format, so the only way to use them

is at Walgreens.

[northoftheborder]

11. thanks for some suggestions of equipment to think about.....

[CrispyQ]

14. I had to laugh at the title. -nt