[Gadley]

I'm entirely new to shooting film and and have barely started my first roll. If there are any people on here from the UK, what high street places do you use to process your film? Shall I trust in Boots?

I think I'll shoot a few rolls before I potentially decide to look into home processing...although I'm not exactly technical so this could prove too tricky for me!

Thanks

[gofour3]

I'm entirely new to shooting film and and have barely started my first roll. If there are any people on here from the UK, what high street places do you use to process your film? Shall I trust in Boots?

I think I'll shoot a few rolls before I potentially decide to look into home processing...although I'm not exactly technical so this could prove too tricky for me!

Thanks

Not sure if they do processing, but I have bought film from them:

Silverprint - Home - News - Photographic Materials and more -

Phil.

[Vendee]

Hi Gadley,

Congrats on your move to film. Are you talking about shooting colour or b&w? It's very easy and reasonably cheap to develop b&w film yourself. From there you can either scan the negatives or print them in a darkroom. Darkroom printing gives stunning results and is great fun but is time consuming and the paper is fairly expensive.

Developing and printing colour film is much more tricky and not too many people still do it.

Why not give Boots a try for your first roll? They have been doing it for quite a few years now so they should know what they are doing. Recently I shot a test roll of colour film and took it to a small local photo shop. They charged a very reasonable £2 to develop the film but quality of the negatives vere disgusting. So much dust and scratches. I guess that their machine gets used so rarely that it never gets cleaned out.

So try and take your film to somewhere that does relatively high volume but I would highly recommend that you start looking on ebay for the stuff you need to develop your own b&w. Good luck

[Gadley]

Thanks guys! At the moment I've just loaded it with a simple Kodak BW400CN just to try. Vendee, I see huge lists of equipment required for home developing and disposal of chemicals etc which seems a bit much for someone of my patience though I'd probably enjoy it, so may have read into it.

In the meantime I'll give boots a go!

Thanks again.

[Vendee]

Thanks guys! At the moment I've just loaded it with a simple Kodak BW400CN just to try. Vendee, I see huge lists of equipment required for home developing and disposal of chemicals etc which seems a bit much for someone of my patience though I'd probably enjoy it, so may have read into it.

In the meantime I'll give boots a go!

Thanks again.

Ok, you don't need that much in the way of equipment and ebay is your friend.

You would need a tank and reel (£3.20), Changing bag (£3.20), a thermometer(£2.80) and some measuring containers (£2.80). All those prices are taken from completed listings on ebay. If you list ebay items by distance, you can find stuff local to you and save on postage.

As for the chemicals, you need developer, stopbath and fixer. None of them are hazardous and do not require special disposal. You can buy them online but Jessops still sell them so you can pick them up from your local store.

Developer (D-76) will cost £4.95 and will do about 25 rolls of 35mm film. Stopbath is £5.00 and will last for ages. Fixer is £10 and will be good for about 60 rolls of film.

So for £30-£40 you can be developing your own film. You don't need a darkroom, you can do it at the kitchen sink. The only thing you need is somewhere that is dust free to hang developed film to dry for a couple of hours.

You will get lots of advice and encouragement in this forum and on other photography forums on the net. See how you get on with your BW400CN and take it from there. Happy shooting.

[Gadley]

Thanks for all of the information! Very helpful. Realised my mirror damper has completely disintegrated, so pending my repair kit delivery, it will have to wait a little while. Have taken a few shots with the ME Super but without the foam, the focusing screen is getting whacked by the screw on the mirror! Hopefully this won't have affected any pictures I've already taken. Haha I'm such a beginner.

Cheers

[Alan Clogwyn]

Peak Imagng are a safe bet for all kinds of film, reasonable prices to. If you take non C41 film to boots that's where they send it anyway I understand. I've been using Genie Imaging to do mine.

BW400CN is a lovely film, very smooth tones and almost impossible to screw the exposure up.

---

Last edited by Alan Clogwyn; 08-14-2011 at 11:33 AM.

[Gadley]

Alan, thanks very much I'll see how mine turn out. I really don't know what to expect.

[Enrico]

The Kodak400cn will be processed in c41 so everywhere incl boots, i tried few times snappy snaps it was ok but priced

I send the b&w 120 to Ilford lab wich is not cheap but it does a good job

[womble]

I use The Darkroom UK which is not a cheap lab but does do an excellent job on the whole (especially with BW400CN which can come out with a funny colour cast from some labs as they print it as a colour film as well as develop it as one). The Darkroom also provide a free shipping label which when factored into the cost makes it a little less expensive than it seems at first. More often or not the film comes back in two days.

K.

[pruvaloo]

Hi Gadley, just wanted to echo Vendee - you can pick up all of the chemicals you need to develop your own films very cheaply. I bought a kit of c41 chemicals last year and started developing my own films (the first time I had ever done this), by following the very simply instructions I came out with a roll of perfectly developed film - I was absolutely over the moon as I'd always thought developing you own stuff meant years of practise and a specialist dark room.

I managed to pick up a huge box of second hand developing equipment off ebay for about £40 from an old photographer who lived a couple of miles from my house. Then like I said it was just a matter of following the very simple instructions that came with my kit of chemicals (basically if you can operate a stop watch, or count minutes on a normal clock then you really can't go wrong!!). Just fill up your kitchen sink with hot water, get it to the right temp, then away you go.

I'd really recommend having a go yourself, if you didn't want to spend money on chemicals just to 'try it out' you can even develop film in coffee believe it or not! Check out Caffenol to see the results and get the recipes - I haven't tried this myself yet but am very very tempted to do so.

If you still want a lab to develop your films, then in the past I have used Photo Express Film Processing & Developing UK several times and the service has always been very good, the turnaround is usually a couple of days, once I mailed my films on the Monday and the developed films were delivered back to my house with the Wednesday post.

Hope this helps

Cheers

Dan