'Pro' camera labs

This week I have had the pleasure of shooting my very first 5x4” shots – naturally that meant getting them developed as soon as possible of course. So a trip back to one of Brisbane’s pro labs was in order. Now 5x4 is pretty advanced stuff in this day and age – the cameras have no automation whatsoever, and the user generally loads the negatives themselves. That would tend to imply the use has to know what they are shooting!
Well it wasn’t good enough for the people at the pro lab. First I was asked if they were colour. Then I was asked a second time to confirm that they were black and white – madness – yet the woman didn’t seem to care what film it was at all – and of course every black and white film requires a different developing time.
So next, simply out of curiosity I enquired about which developer the labs use. Of course the woman had no clue and it must have caused her the greatest inconvenience to ask the lab tech.

It was kind of surprising to find out that the lab uses Kodak HC110 for everything. Now I can see why, looking at some of the push processed films I have had done at this lab that they are really much grainier than they could be if using specific speed increasing chemistry. Want an example? Well here it is. Home developed HP5 @ISO 1600 using Ilford Microphen (shot in Briabane), compared with lab developed HP5@ 800 (Top of Alpe d'Huez). Click for full size!

Kuripla Bridge, Brisbane

Lifts, Alpe D'Huez - summer

I know it is not an entirely accurate comparison, since they are at different speeds on different days, but I think the film shot in Brisbane is clearly the winner, with less grain, and more shadow / highlight detail than the shot at Alpe d’Huez. I guess it is also accentuated by the fact that the light in Brisbane has a larger brightness range– meaning more problems with shadow and highlight details with push processing. At the end of the day I think , given the general vibe of the situation, id rather be using the correct chemistry for the correct situation.

So the question I pose is this. Why, when you can buy a full 5 L of any Kodak developer, capable of developing up to 50 films for between $8 and $15 would you insist on using one developer for all films? Even if you only developed 2-3 films per 5L, you would still be ahead at the kind of prices these places charge. Clearly each film or situation has its own suitable developer – and particularly when your lab advertises services such as push and pull processing - you need to have some different chemisty on hand to do this to a ‘pro’ standard.

The solution I propose to all the students this so called ‘pro lab’ is targeting is this – spend a couple of bucks getting developing equipment – it will pay for itself soon enough, you can have specialized chemistry, and you don’t have to deal with people who clearly hate their job and know squat about it.