Re: 35mm film, how much longer? The shift toward mail-order photofinishing for film is all but certain.
Frankly, there haven't been many decent one-hour processors out there
anyway. They tended to use cheap enlarging lenses and the ones I tried here
in Philadelphia did not have the greatest temperature control on their
chemicals. Colors were often washed out.
It has always been frustrating for me to have used excellent quality
equipment and fine lenses, only to see the final results look like they were
taken by an inexpensive camera--the kind that are sold in blister-packs. So
I've limited my print processing to only Kodak (Qualex), where there is
courier in-store pickup and delivery daily, and my mail order business has
always gone to Dale Labs (www.dalelabs.com) which still prints optical
prints (their Nikkor enlarging lenses cost over $10,000 apiece!) and has
always given me excellent results, albeit at a price substantially higher
than the one-hour labs. But one gets what one pays for.
I'm going to try Dwayne's Photo for some Kodachrome work. They sell the
film and process it, too. Their web site listed a number of interesting
services, including hi-resolution scans of Kodachrome slides (15 MB) for
only $4.00 per roll.
With today's superior mail options, it isn't the big deal to send film out
for processing that it once was. More people should try it. After a few
rounds, it becomes second nature. If all those inferior drug-store labs
disappeared overnight, would it really have a negative impact on us? I
think that it might actually result in better quality images, as it would
require us to have our film processed by folks that really knew what they
were doing, not by some high school kid.
Jeremy
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