Film Processing: Cheaper Than a Cup of Coffee

This morning I picked up my film from CVS. For less than a Grande Pike’s Place blend at Starbucks, I have color processing, in as little as an hour if I needed it. $2.34 to be exact. No crappy 4x6 prints, no lo-res scans on CD-R.

I also opted not to have the negatives cut. With all this high-volume, automated processing, they often come back miscut. Plus, they put them in cheapo sleeves that I have to throw out anyway. Instead, they deliver the negatives rolled-up in a recycled film container. That’s fine with me.

So, does the Konica IIIA work? Well, every frame came out. Negative densities look good. I’m on my way out to a gig, so, I sleeved them to relax the curl and tomorrow I’ll loupe and scan them. I did an initial scan of one frame shot indoors, wide open, and aside from a little motion blur, it looks pretty good.

The Epson V500 can scan up to 12 frames in a batch, if your negs are cut in strips of six frames each. Four is the norm, so it takes three scanning sessions to complete a full roll. You prescan them, check off the boxes of the frames you want scanned, select each thumbnail to set the exposure and resolution preferences, click scan, and go get a cup of coffee. If you have the Digital Ice feature turned on to filter out dust and scratches (and it’s well worth it in the long run) it takes a while, but at least you can go do something else while it’s doing all the work.

Scanning a “contact sheet” is much quicker. You can turn off Digital Ice and use a lower resolution. Later, you can rescan the “gems” at a higher res, and any adjustments you applied in Camera Raw can be transferred to the higher-resolution file.

Before I judge too harshly the sharpness of the IIIA’s lens or the accuracy of its focus, I’ll need to keep the film as flat as possible. This may mean modifying or replacing the V500’s negative carrier, which allows the film to curl. Every little problem is amplified with 135 film, which is much smaller than 120.

So far 1/250, 1/100, 1/50 and 1/25 seem to work fine. The next step is to check the really slow shutter speeds, and make sure the flash syncs up. If everything checks out, this will be that real rangefinder experience I’ve been looking for. At least until that bargain Leica M4 come along.