Re: [APML] Slide Film Developing

["Joseph O'Neil" <joneil@multiboard.com>]

At 09:50 03/09/01 -0400, you wrote:
>    I would suggest that developing slide film is a job best left to a 
> professional quality controlled lab.  You spend hours and hours taking 
> photographs, it only takes a couple of seconds to ruin them.  When I took 
> regular pictures as a job, it was always a struggle to get good results 
> from slides.  The emulsions seemed to want to attract and hold any dust 
> that was anywhere near our darkroom, temperatures had to be exactly 
> monitored and held.  It was not worth the effort.  Our local lab gives me 
> back mounted slides for 10 bucks per roll of 36 in a couple of hours and 
> they are always careful and exact.  I would not venture into doing slide 
> developing again.


         Ah you're nothing but a big wussy!  Spend $5,000 on a complete 
Jobo processign system, spend that much agian making yourself a 95% dust 
free dark room, pay major attention to every detail along the way in your 
developing, hey, you're just as good as the big labs.
:)

         Seriously, the real problem with E6 processing at home is the 
short shelf life of the chemisty used, especailly after you mix it 
up.  Unless you are shooting a lot of slides, it's not very economical to 
develop your own E6.   If you are shooting a lot fo E6 film for other than 
astro-photo use already, then yes, it might be worth the while.

         But having done it a couple of times, it's a lot of work, and in 
some ways not worth the effort.   When you develop colour film, you have to 
do it the same way, exactlyt he same way, every single time.
         By contrast, one of the joys of black and white film, is you can 
drastically alter the look of your film by varying developer, times, 
agitation, etc, etc.  So variabliltiy in developing B&W film is an 
essential part of the artistic process if you want to push it that way, 
even with hypered tech pan to a small degree - for example, the choice of 
Hc-110 VS D-19 VS Dektol as a developer, depending on what object you are 
shooting.   But not with colour film.    99% of the time, there's one way 
to do it, and that's it, so you might was well get a good nearby lab to do 
it, unless you do not have one who can.
joe



http://www.oneilphoto.on.ca
http://www.multiboard.com/~joneil


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