My New Darkroom

I didn't actually intend for this pigeon to be flying over the head of this earthbound angel, it was just a random miracle.

Before the takeover of digital photography, I was almost never without a darkroom. There was one at my high school, in the basement of my college dorm, and even in the warehouse of one of my employers. I set up ad hoc black and white darkrooms in the bathrooms of the various apartments and houses I’ve lived in. If I needed to develop color film or make color prints there were literally hundreds of labs at my disposal, from drug store minilabs to high-end custom labs and everything in-between.

Today, even though I still have all of my original darkroom equipment, I’ve set it up no more than twice. It’s just too inconvenient and tiring to have to wait until after the kids are asleep, set everything up, then have only an hour or two to print before I have to take everything down again. Although there are still one or two custom labs here in Philadelphia, it would take almost two hours round-trip just to drop film off and return home; a journey I would have to repeat when the film was ready for pick-up. This is not my idea of convenience either. Yes, I can and sometimes do process the film at home and scan it. (I still own a Nikon Coolscan V ED; worth it’s weight it gold, at least to me.) The problem with this is that it’s too time-consuming to scan every frame, yet it’s often hard to tell just from looking at the negatives which images are winners and which aren’t.

For those of you who care, this was shot on Kodak Tri-X. This allowed me to keep the shutter speed high and the aperture small, so I could preset the focus for roughly 12 feet and shoot at will. Using a 28mm lens helped too.

There is a lot more detail in the original negative than you see in this scan, especially in the highlights, but I was aiming more for mystery than HDR in this shot anyway.

I mention all of this up-front so that the well-intentioned-advice-givers among you will understand my rationale for seeing if a mail-order lab might be the solution to my desire to find a low-hassle way to keep shooting film. My solution, at least for the time-being, is a lab that is literally called The Darkroom. Let me also state up-front that I have no affiliation or business interest with them. I’m just another customer to them and derive no benefit from telling you about them other than the pleasure of sharing my experience; that and having a decent topic to write about. I am also not advocating for a return to film photography. I just want to have it available as a reasonably convenient option.

So here’s how it works: When I’m ready to have film processed, I go onto The Darkroom’s website, tell them how many rolls I’m sending, what type, what processing options I want. My standard choice is film processing (B&W or color) with medium-resolution scans of each image onto a CD-ROM and also onto their web server. There are two benefits to having the scans available on their server: First, I can see them without having to wait for the CD-ROM to arrive; second, I can order prints from the files they already have rather than wait to upload them later. Film processing + scan + upload costs $10.00 per roll, which I pre-pay by credit card online. The Darkroom then links me to a postage-paid mailing label that I can tape onto a heavy duty envelope and use to mail the film to them.

So far I’m sent them seven rolls of film and all seven have been returned within a week, using regular U.S. mail. Better yet, they e-mail progress reports at each step of the process. You’ll know when they receive your film, when the scans are available online, and when the film, CD, and/or prints are on their way.

One of the charms of color negative film is subtle color like this. One of the unfortunate side-effects is a green color shift in the shadows, which is obvious in the example above. This was also partly caused by the overcast day.

Here's another example, this time with less obvious color shifts. The film was Kodak Portra 400.

A medium-res, 1024x1536 pixel scan is large enough to produce a 5x7-inch print at 300 dpi. For an extra $5.00 you can upgrade to an “enhanced scan,” which measures 2048x3072 pixels and is large enough for prints up to 12x18-inches. I haven’t opted for the enhanced scans yet because if I need something larger I have the original film and can simply scan it myself. From my perspective this gives me the best of both worlds: I get good utility scans of each shot to use for previews, blog posts, and small prints and I can easily tell which shots merit scanning at 4000 ppi on my Coolscan. By “utility scans” I mean that they are of better than average sharpness and quality, with no more than a few occasional dust spots per image. That said, you have to provide them with reasonably well-exposed images. You can’t expect heroic rescue measures for $10.00 per roll nor will you receive them.

One final thing you B&W shooters should keep in mind is that although The Darkroom states that they offer “true black and white” prints, they neglect to mention that these are available only when they are printing from negatives, not from scans. If you order B&W prints from scans they will be printed on color paper. The results on color paper are reasonably neutral; fine for proofs and snapshots, but probably not what you’d want to frame and exhibit. I haven't seen any of their true black and white prints yet.

Here's another example of the Kodak Portra 400 look, this time a bit more snappy. I did no color correction or filtering, yet note the neutral gray tone of the mannequins.

The photos that accompany this post are all resized JPEGs, direct from The Darkroom’s scans and with minimal tweaks on my part. If some look grainy or you think the color looks a bit unusual it’s because they were shot on ISO 400 film. That’s how it looks. Believe it or not, some folks like this look so much they even buy special software that allows their digital images to mimic it. Go figure.

By the way, if any of you reading this are still shooting film yourselves and have found your own ways to cope with the reducted processing options, I'd love to hear about them. We film addicts have got to stick together.

Comments

[Chris]

Here in the UK there are still several labs processing by mail order, and you can also still get processing done in a few of the larger supermarkets (eg ASDA, owned by Walmart, which does process-only C41 for £2 a roll, and charges £1 for a CD with what I think of as a "low res" scan at about 1200 dpi). Quite a lot of film fans seem to do their own black and white processing, using a changing bag and tank rather than the full-blown darkroom (I haven't tried this yet). Both black and white and transparency films are more expensive to get processed commercially, and fewer labs do them, sometimes with slower turnarounds. It all does add quite a bit of expense, but on the other hand there's magic in older cameras, and some wonderful lenses can be had quite cheaply, so you can sometimes get a really classy outfit for less than the price of an entry DSLR!

[Janne]

I process BW myself, and leave colour to my local camera shop, which, in turn processes 35mm locally and sends off 120 format to a regional pro lab.

I've tried their CD options, and while it works I prefer to scan myself using my V750. It's iffy for 35mm, but fine for 120. I use MF more than 35mm so I can live with that. Scan time is no problem, so I scan everything and preview the scans.

Load a holder, then go and do something else for half an hour while the scanner works. Or I start one holder when I get home; one after dinner; and one before bed. The results are slow, but I spend very little actual time on it.

Scans are "raw", as in, I scan as transparent images, not negatives, and save to 16 bit TIF. I don't let the scanner software do anything to the images; instead I do all post-processing myself with a combination of scripts I've written, Darktable and Gimp.

Would love to set up a darkroom. Just don't have the space for it unfortunately.

[Ben]

I'm a confirmed Costco photographer.

Almost all Costco locations process C-41 film (except, of course, the one nearest me). They do it in one hour. So I drop my rolls off, go shopping, eat lunch and they're done.

I then scan the prints I like. It's not the most deluxe approach, and of course they don't do "real" B&W (Kodak CN400 looks fine, though), but whaddya want for $6 a roll?

[Ranjit Grover]

Going back to chemical processing in the present digital era sounds more like self punishment. If you get a kick out of it, well, it is OK.
But photography is about getting photos and not about self flagellating in a dark room with all the fumes and smells. Till I changed over to the digital I used to do my own B and W processing in a good, spacious dark room but now the very thought sends a shiver through my spine.
Ranjit Grover India

[Gordon Lewis]

Ranjit,

You're writing to a guy who actually enjoyed printing in a darkroom and who still misses it. That said, it has been years since I last set it up and I have no trouble understanding why not everyone loved B&W printing as much as I did. Because I also still like to shoot film every now and then, I looked for a convenient alternative to home processing or distant and/or low-quality local labs. I shared my answer for those who share my interest and situation. As always, your milage may vary.

[Marvin]

+1 for Costco. I take my 35mm color negative film there. $1.59 per roll for process-only. Then I scan them in myself. Slide film, B&W, or 120 gets sent away. I've used The Darkroom, Dwayne's, and North Coast Photo.

[Stephen S. Mack]

Lucky me: there is a professional lab/real camera shop about an hour away in Charlottesville, Virginia, where I take my colour negative work and the occasional b/w roll (usually looking for light leaks in my Ukrainian rangefinders). I most often process b/w at home, and take the negatives of the ones I think are deserving to Pro Camera to have them print them. I've got two choices around the place where I could set up a chemical darkroom, which I've been fixin' to do for some time. Maybe this year will be the charm.

With best regards,
Stephen

[RickW]

What I really enjoyed doing in the darkroom was printing: the test exposure, the dodging, the burning, the smells, the magical emergence of the image in the developer. Sending film away so that somebody else (or some machine) has that experience doesn't appeal to me. I have a manual-focus 35mm SLR decorating my "photo desk" (Mac mini + monitor), but I haven't shot a roll of film in 5 years, and don't miss it. I do my processing in Lightroom, send the files to Denver, and a few days later get prints back that are almost exactly what I had on the screen.

Well, I miss printing film a little... There is something about loading a roll of film, unloading it after shooting, and having images come out that SD cards just don't match.

Rick

[JeroenP]

Thanks for the excellent post Gordon.

I've never had the ambition to do color processing (slide or negative) myself. And with my current set of digital tools I see no reason to start. Yes, many of my images have color casts, spots, scratches, color dye issues, grain from underexposure and so on. But there's so much I can do with film scans in my digital darkroom to repair and enhance the images.

I've never had it this good, with respect to film-based photography. That's what I keep thinking whenever I pop a negative into my scanner (a top notch Minolta 2800 dpi scanner). Film has improved, the lab I use has consistent quality, my current computer is so much faster with processing images than ten years ago.

In Rotterdam (The Netherlands) I have a few options for developing film. The by far easiest option is to drop off the film at HEMA, a national retailer. They have the film developed and printed at a Fujifilm-owned lab, if I remember correctly. E-6 slide development is less than 4,- euros for 35mm. The results are delicious.

The 5x4in prints that come with the C-41 development from this lab are usually so-so, mostly because there's crazy amounts of sharpening before printing. But that's the digital part of color printing, and applies equally to prints from digital cameras. Probably a up/downsampling related issue.

My experiences with black and white and labs haven't been very encouraging in the past few years. It's expensive and of low quality (and one roll vanished last year -- I always have the impression that that is more common with lower volume work). To me, black and white is a valid candidate for the "wet" home dark room.