On Tue, 16 Mar 2004 03:26:49 -0600
Philippe Le Zuikomane <zuikomane@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> O Wise Listers, I blushingly appeal to you:
The subject makes you sound Dutch...is that intentional? ;)
>
> On retrieving my beginner's, erm, 'efforts' from the lab (Houston
> Photo Imaging), I was handed a spool containing the remains of two
> Kodak T-Max 100 rolls. They were both perfectly clear and featureless
> as if unexposed, save for half an inch of black negative past the 'XX'
> marks. The Kodak film information appears clearly in the edges.
>
> The lab guy did not look in the least bothered. He behaved as if I had
> handed in two unexposed rolls. Well, I did not.
Don't buy that guy any christmas presents this year...
> The subjects were not uniformly white, the emulsion speed was, I
If they were uniformly white, then your film wouldn't be perfectly clear,
but probably rather perfectly "grayish", no? If I recall correctly T-max
isn't a diapositive film... ;)
<SNIP>
> Interestingly, only the T-Max rolls were affected. All of the Ilford
> B&W and the color negatives came out -- almost -- OK. The labsters
> managed to slice into several frames. They separated the tail ends of
> several rolls and grouped them in a single preserver. The PrintFile
> preservers show quite a few marks and scratches, too. The contacts
> were made with the negatives inside the preservers, have lines from
> the preservers, and show white specks in places. Plus, nothing ever
> looks really sharp. Worse -- correct me if I'm wrong -- a good number
> of contact sheets are dark and look underexposed, with a complete loss
> of shadow detail available in the negatives. In quite a few cases, it
> does not look as if frames of very brighly lit scenes needed to be
> accommodated on the same sheet. Even so, they could have used two
> exposures and duplicated contacts where appropriate. A typical example
> is an Ilford FP4 Plus evening shot by tungsten light through a Zuiko
> 40mm 2.0 used wide open, yielding a frame where the darkish blue
> chenille scarf over a black wool sweater has vanished although its
> detail is visible in the negative -- in a sheet where all the shots
> are low-light. In another sheet, outdoor photos of a graveyard on a
> sunny late winter afternoon are gloomy to invisible as if taken during
> a brewing storm or at nightfall. Etc.
>
> Where did I do wrong, O Listers?
I would suggest that you went wrong when choosing the lab. They sound like
they deserve to loose quite a few of their customers.....
Also, I'd say that you went wrong in letting somebody else develop your BW
films. BW film development is Really Easy (tm), not that expensive -- and
a *lot* of fun. Plus, as you get good at it, you'll be able to get much
better results than the development-drug-stores. Also (although this can be
a bonus or a drawback), you'll know who screwed up when you get a whole
blank roll of T-max out of your development tanks.
> Could the lab have confused the fixer
> and the developer for the negative? Used an incorrect mix for the
> emulsion? (The destroyed (or unexposed, yeah) Kodak rolls are numbered
> 0006 and 0007; the Ilford rolls 0008 through 0015. The color negatives
> were processed separately of course.
>
> I'm just a beginner, but I have trouble accepting the idea of
> unfathomable user error or one-off major camera malfunction affecting
> just those two rolls, both with the same emulsion. Especially with
> badly cut negatives and mostly unusable contact sheets, for which I
> was charged mucho dinero.
>
I'd say that, even without considering your two rolls of T-max, your lab is
at serious fault. The two rolls of T-max *may* be your fault (did you hand
them the wrong rolls, for example? if you have more T-max in your bag, you
may accidentially have grapped unexposed ones instead of exposed ones...)
-- but they may also be the fault of the lab. Considering the faults which
can be proven to be lab-induced, it sounds like "competance" is in about as
short supply as "care" -- and they may simply have screwed up.
In Paris, where I live, there are exactly two labs I trust for developing
my color-slides and those very few color-prints I make. They're real "labs"
and not drug-store-chain-things, and every job is a custom job to them.
Still, I do not trust either of them with more than half of any outing's
short -- to err *is* human, after all, so spreading the risk seems like a
good thing to do.
There is, however, a solution to your problem: grab the next flight out and
come visit Paris again -- it's starting to get beautiful, weather-wise
(we've got bright sunshine today) and a lot less cold. And I'll show you to
a trustworthy lab, where you can get half of your films processed ;)
--thomas
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