RLSeipleSr Loc: North of Boston

I shot a roll of AgfaPhoto 400 Vista Plus film in my Canon AE-1P ... I sent the film to Willow Photo Lab, Willow Springs, MO to be developed and scanned ... I contacted them and they rescanned the film ...

The first scan 20170830(37) - you can see the thin blue line going across the scan and a great deal of dust ...

The first scan 20170830(1) - dust but at least the color is okay ...

... I contacted them and they rescanned the film ...

The rescan - 20170830(Redo)(37) - Redo - the same frame ... no blue line but still plenty of dust ...

The rescan 20170830(Redo)(1)- now has dust and a very pleasing tint to it ...

I will continue shopping for a lab ... maybe back to WalMart ...

Bob S

The first scan ...


The redo ...


The first scan ...


The redo ...

millman221

I have used old school photo lab w great results. I will get link to download scans 2-3 days or sooner after they receive film. They return negatives and can handle 35, 120 and other stocks.

RLSeipleSr Loc: North of Boston

Thank you for the information ... I checked their web site - good information and easy to navigate ... I think I will give them a try ...

millman221

Great ... lmk how it works out

questor84 Loc: Cadillac, Michigan

Try The Darkroom in San Clemente. I have had multiple rolls of 120 developed and scanned. Have been happy each time.
The darkroom.com

millman221

I've heard good things about darkroom as well.

If you are shooting bnw, you could try develop ing yourself ....

RLSeipleSr Loc: North of Boston

Thanks ... I will check 'The Darkroom' also ...

I have a bunch of color film to use but I do plan to switch to B&W (always enjoyed it in my younger days) and process the film here at home! The only concern that I have is scanning the negitives to '.jpgs' ... have no experience and have not done any research - yet ...

Bob S

millman221

I bought an epson photo v550 (or maybe 500?) For less than $100. Can't really tell the difference between scans that i do an the local lab's $800 machine.

millman221

Here is a scan from a pic from this past weekend...

rook2c4 Loc: Philadelphia, PA USA

Bob S, you're not that far from Philadelphia. There are several labs here in the city that do very decent scanning work. Philadelphia Photographics and Indie Photo, for example.

rehess Loc: South Bend, Indiana, USA

What are you going to do with the images that come from the scanner??

RLSeipleSr Loc: North of Boston

Print, mount, frame, and hang the ones that I really like, just like I do now ... !

I print 8X10s, orderd bulk mat board with back board and sleeve (Golden State Art) and use inexpensive frames ... change the photos when I get the urge ...

Bob S

RLSeipleSr Loc: North of Boston

After my second contact with Willow I received an email telling me that all the trouble was with the film ... I questioned them and received a reply ...

"Willow Photo Lab just sent you a full refund for your purchase" ...

Thought I'd share ...

Bob S

blackest Loc: Ireland

color negatives are hard and the colors are not stable, they also scratch easily and pick up dust. With color you can get to use 4 color scanning the 4th channel is infrared and it picks up dust and helps remove it. doesn't work for black & white. My epson on its best IQ highest resolution setting takes an hour to scan 12 35mm negatives, they still need touching up.

I now use a black & white enlarger with the head mounted sideways and no lens. My K5 with a 180mm macro lens mounted on a tripod in portrait orientation. it's pretty straight forward aligning them. The enlarger head is easy to adjust to get level with my camera and i can slide it left right back and forwards to get the negative filling the frame. I use what in practice is about an f4 aperture and manually focus on the negative. I use a 2 second delay and usually have an exposure of 1/45th at ISO 80 and a tungston white balance. If I go for an aperture such as f22 i record all the damage to the negative. Once set up its a few seconds a frame. I capture in raw.

In lightroom I invert the tone curve. and try and get a white balance this has too much cyan. This is because 2000 degrees is as low a temperature that you can get in lightroom. I then choose to export as a 16 bit tiff to silverefx and then hit cancel. the tiff has all its sliders set at neutral. setting a white balance this time usually works fairly well. If not a black and white conversion is usually a good option.

I've not done black & white film yet to be honest but it will be easier. I tried many things to get an evenly illuminated negative and the enlarger is the best by far. It's pretty much designed to be an optimal light source. Wear gloves when handling negatives the dust free rubber type. It will avoid greasy finger prints on your negatives.

You are pretty much guaranteed to need to clean up the negative, this is the slow part. If a negative is poorly exposed you should skip it, it will never look good.

Hope this helps.

rehess Loc: South Bend, Indiana, USA

I guess scanning them just to print them seems like a long path to prints. I am scanning my old media, mostly slides but also some old color and B&W negatives. Getting the images right is not easy. Almost every scan has issues that I'm fairly sure would show up in a print - scratches, dust, fungi, etc - and I end up correcting these scans one at a time; this is despite the fact that my elderly Nikon scanner does an excellent job of using parallax to eliminate issues when it can.

I did have Willow Photo Lab develop some film for me, but that was all I had them do; I did the scanning myself, and honestly I have to tell you that the media they sent me was some of the best I've scanned. So, I don't know what is going on between you and them - but I'm quite sure what they were trying is not a trivial task, and I'm quite sure that they would have done the job right if something hadn't reared its ugly head.