Drbobcameraguy Loc: Eaton Ohio

I have a friend who found a roll of film from years ago. He would like to have it developed will someone please tell me a very good place to send it to have developed. I know nothing about any of this. Thanks in advance for your help.

Peteso Loc: Blacks Hills

Yes...a lab that can develop film AND digitize the film, preferably to a RAW file, please.

RLSeipleSr Loc: North of Boston

I deal with "The Darkroom" never had a problem ... you can call them for guidance ... !

Basil Loc: New Mexico

I’ve had good luck with these folks:

https://bluemooncamera.com/

CHG_CANON Loc: the Windy City

No one does that, to RAW.

To the OP, TheDarkroom.com is a reasonable place to send it. They even have a comment about old film: https://thedarkroom.com/old-rolls-film-developing/

To the UHH community, getting film developed and scanned is about the same price from everyone. TheDarkroom is probably the most well known, but there's lots of places online to 'mail order' process your rolls. They tend to work out to the same overall price, when you factor in who pays the postage for both directions and the cost of the scanning. TheDarkroom costs $3 more per roll for their 'enhanced scan' that is just the minimum of acceptable for me, yielding JPEGs at 2048×3072 pixels.

terryMc Loc: Arizona's White Mountains

I send film to the Darkroom marked "Develop Only" and then scan it myself with an Epson scanner to Tiff files If you want raw files, you will need to copy negs yourself with a camera.

MJPerini

There is no such thing as "Scanning to RAW" . RAW means RAW sensor data , it is not an image format.
You CAN scan to TIFF 8 or 16 bit or JPEG 8 bit only.
You COULD photograph negatives with a digital camera and get a RAW file which would have to be converted in post.

BebuLamar

I don't think any lab offers to digitize to a raw file but you can do it yourself by digitizing the negative with your camera.

delder Loc: Maryland

That makes sense!

skatz

True, but don’t expect the same post-processing latitude as if the original photo were taken digitally to RAW.

Capn_Dave

I am just curious. Does anyone read previous comments, or do they just post answers the we get to read over and over. Just look at this post and see how many people said the same thing. "You can't go from film to RAW"

chrisg-optical Loc: New York, NY

Here at the UHH, we promote redundancy, repetition, and beating a topic to multiple deaths and resurrections. :)))))

srt101fan

Sad but true....

burkphoto Loc: High Point, NC

If you have the film developed, most labs will scan it for you. But no one scans to a raw file. Scanners don't save raw files. Most labs offer a choice of scans — usually they have a standard "scan to an 8-bit JPEG in sRGB color space" service and a custom "scan to a 16-bit TIFF in Adobe RGB (or ProPhoto RGB)" service.

There is always the possibility that someone will "camera scan" your film, but every single camera model capable of saving raw files writes to a different file standard. That makes it a requirement that you would have software that is capable of interpreting that file type and that camera model profile.

I'd suggest you Google "film developing service near me," and choose one.

If you have OLD expired, exposed film, you need a specialist who understands custom processing for such films. If it says "Process C-22" or "Process K-12" (or K-earlier number) or "Process E4" (or earlier), you may be able to get black-and-white from it, but probably not color. If it is black-and-white film, and you know approximately when it was exposed, you might get viewable images.

If you are an ADVANCED hobbyist, and want to learn about "camera scanning," read this white paper I wrote a couple of years ago.

.

Camera Scanning.pdf opens in your favorite PDF reader.
Attached file:
(Download)

Capn_Dave