Color Film Development

[jonmkay]

Hello,
I have been doing photography for ten years and I love to shoot but have only ever shot B&W film because that is all my darkroom is set up for. All color work I do has been digital. Wanting to expand and grow I bought some Kodak Portra to try my hand at color film. My question is where would be the best place to have my negatives developed? Will a one hour place like Walgreen produce good quality or should I send it in to a lab someplace to have it developed? If sending it in is the best option can someone recommend a good lab? Thank you for all of your help

 

[BlackSheep]

Every place is different when it comes to finding the best place to get your film developed. Hopefully someone local to you will see this and help you out. Otherwise, is there a local film camera club that you could ask for advice? Or maybe a camera store would be able to help you.

 

[gsgary]

If you lived in UK i could give you loads of places that are good

 

[bsinmich]

My darkroom is set up for color and B&W but if I only have 1 roll of color I have been happy with the processing at Sam's Club. The cost to mix checmicals for 1 roll is out of sight. Most small 1 hour labs will do a pretty good job as long as they keep their chemicals fresh,

 

[djacobox372]

Developing color film yourself isn't really any harder than B+W, there's just a few more steps and it's more expensive, but still cheap compared to having it done.

Maintaining temps at 105 degrees is the only new trick that you much learn, I use a cooler full of 105 degree water to keep my chemicals at the correct temps, I also agitate under a pet store heat lamp to make sure the temp doesn't drop to much.

One nice thing about color development is that the results are consistent, agitation and development times don't affect results as much as b/w

I'd suggest trying one of the kits from www.freestylephoto.biz

 

[Josh66]

I agree with djacobox - if you're already set up for B&W, the best place to do color is at home. I might even say that color is easier than B&W... Getting the developer to the right temperature is the only "hard" part about C-41, and that really isn't that hard.

Color chemicals don't typically last as long as B&W chemicals though, so you may want to wait till you have enough film ready for developing to make it worthwhile before you mix everything up. The kits I've used don't have a wetting agent in the stabilizer, so you may want to add a few drops of Photo-Flo to that. Without Photo-Flo, I get water spots - even with distilled water.

 

[tyqre]

I went from B+w right to E6 and so far i've done 3 rolls. All turned out great. I just fill my tub with the heat turned all the way up and I put the chemicals in there.