Fully analogue automatic colour photo processing in Nuremberg/surroundings?

Berferd · 2010-12-19T17:06:53+00:00

Hallo Leute, diese Woche habe ich nach vielen Jahren mal wieder einen Farbfilm (Fujicolor 400) verknipst zum Testen meiner neu erworbenen Pentax und war ang...

Berferd

Hi everyone, This week, for the first time in years, I shot a roll of colour film (Fujicolor 400) to test out my newly acquired Pentax, and I have to say I was a bit… let’s call it ‘surprised’ by the results (the colour prints). The pictures look as if they were taken with a cheap mobile phone camera: muddy, clipped, with absolutely dreadful colours. I haven’t seen such rubbish pictures in ages! Apparently, the reason is the digital intermediate step between negative and print, which seems to be standard nowadays (and varies greatly in quality...). By comparison, I looked at a print from the early 90s that was apparently still enlarged entirely by analogue means – a completely different world. Are there still any minilabs or similar places in the Nuremberg area where you can have prints made from colour negatives using purely analogue methods, at affordable prices? Some photo shops still offer the option of ‘manual’ analogue processing – at around 6 to 15 euros per print. Are there still companies that do this in a semi-automated way so that it remains at least reasonably affordable? Best regards, Berferd

Berferd

Is there really nothing in the area? :( I’m looking for the following: - Good C41 and E6 development - Colour negative and colour positive scans with GOOD colour quality and dynamic range - Fully analogue, automated (i.e. the old minilabs) and therefore affordable prints from C41 negatives If there’s nothing in the area, can you recommend a shop or company where I can send it by post?

Clemens

I know of a place in Cologne, but unfortunately not in my home town of all places... but here’s a tip: keep an eye out for ‘Agfa MSC’ mini-labs. At least the older ones (or at least the one run by my friend in Cologne) operate purely on an analogue basis and only scan the negative for colour analysis and the contact sheet. I could ask him if he’d be willing to work via post.

MirkoBoeddecker

Hello, What Berferd describes happens every day and is becoming increasingly common. Due to the general decline in quality resulting from the transition from analogue to digital, and the disappearance of all calibrated standards (every digital camera calculates its own colour values), the quality of the finishing process has gone downhill. When we bought assets from Agfa’s insolvency estate, I spent days wandering through the buildings and looking at everything. There was, for example, a whole department that did nothing but send test films with exposure to laboratories far and wide, pay for them promptly, and evaluate them once they were returned. If colour casts or defects were detected, an Agfa employee would be sent to the laboratory in question (and these included labs in the middle of nowhere that ran nothing more than a minilab) to provide free advice and assistance. The aim was for every Agfa customer to be satisfied with their pictures afterwards, because if the prints were poor, the customer would immediately assume the film was faulty. With the elimination of material costs following the switch to digital, consumers have naturally lost access to such a service, as Agfa no longer exists, and I cannot imagine the remaining manufacturers going to such lengths given the residual market level. As analogue minilabs will soon be a thing of the past (we are currently stripping down our Colenta and converting it to a homemade manual control system), our approach to counter this is to revive the room-temperature colour process. The development of colour prints isn’t all that complicated. You can’t change the gradient anyway, and colour papers are very tolerant of exposure. With basic filtering, you can already achieve a reasonably colour-accurate print, and the finer points are quickly learnt. The room-temperature process can easily be carried out in a photo tray; you simply need to look up the time corresponding to room temperature in the table, develop the paper for that duration, and then bleach-fix it. That’s it. Two trays, 90 seconds each, and you get a colour print of outstanding quality. All we need is a set of colour filters and the chemical kit (in preparation). Then you can get started straight away. We don’t need an expensive colour light, etc. It’s all just a luxury. Best regards, Mirko

MarcS

As analogue minilabs will soon be phased out (we’re currently stripping down our Colenta and converting it to a homemade manual control system), our approach to counter this is to revive the room-temperature colour process. The development of colour prints isn’t all that complicated. You can’t change the gradient anyway, and colour papers are very tolerant of exposure. With basic filtering, you can already achieve a reasonably colour-accurate print, and the finer points are quickly learnt. The room-temperature process can easily be carried out in a photo tray; you simply need to look up the time corresponding to room temperature in the table, develop the paper for that duration, and then bleach-fix it. That’s it. Two trays, 90 seconds each, and you get a colour print of excellent quality. We only need a set of colour filters and the chemical kit (in preparation). Then you can get started straight away. We don’t need an expensive colour lamp etc. It’s all just a luxury. Best regards, Mirko

...sounds very interesting! I develop colour prints in a can later on, but it’s quite a faff to maintain the temperature without a processor. I make a virtue of necessity and play around with the colours, some of which are quite imperfect. I’d be very happy with room-temperature development :) However, there are already (at least in Berlin) labs that can produce very good and balanced colour prints, even online, such as ‘Viertel vor 8’ ...though I don’t know if they work purely analogue. The quality is certainly good, in any case. Regards, Marc