Shel wrote:
> Failing to heed my own advice, and anxious to get some TX
> processed during a busy period, I sent a couple of rolls to the
> local professional lab. Tonight I was looking at the negs
> through a loupe, getting ready for some printing, and was
> horrified at the grain I saw. I compared the lab negs to the
> ones I've processed, and the difference is startling. Never
> again will I send my negs to a lab - NEVER!
> Even my POS negatives from 30 years ago look better.
>
> For those of you who are thinking of sending your B&W to a lab,
> take heed. No one does it better than you.
We've had some great, albeit conflicting, advice about labs here in the past
few days. Aaron wrote a great message about finding out what developer your
lab uses and heeding their advice about film choice, and Shel notes that
processing affects grain.
There's no reason why a custom lab can't do a good job with B&W processing,
but you've got to work to set it up so that it will work. In other words, do
some testing just as you would if you were processing it yourself--match the
film and developer, ascertain at what speed the film has to be shot, etc.
Talk to the lab owner. What you CAN'T do (IMO, as I hope I don't have to
add) is simply drop off your regular film somewhere and hope that it will
turn out the same as if you processed it at home. Aaron made that clear as
well.
BTW, Shel, I fell prey to the same temptations myself once--I decided I was
sick of processing film, shipped off a dozen rolls to a lab--and got back
film that was MORE grainless than my usual. Except it just didn't look
sharp, either--and in any event, it looked different--and I didn't like it
as much. The lab was using T-Max RS developer and I thought I knew how that
looked, but the formula had been "customized" by the lab manager. It was
probably a good developer for the majority of his customers' film, but the
results took me by surprise.
Another never-discussed topic is that enlargers affect grain, too. I once
had a beautiful Leitz Focomat II--the big boy that enlarges medium-format
negatives as well as 35mm. It was quite far towards the "condenser" end of
the light-source spectrum--and it helped me understand, for the first time,
why some people can say that Tri-X has "golf-ball grain." It actually did.
The same *negatives* printed on a Saunders looked like they were made with a
wholly different film. The Leitz was a stunningly beautiful piece of
mechanical engineering--unto sculpture--but I divested. I now have a Durst
as my second enlarger, which is also called a "condenser" enlarger but has
much softer light than that Leitz.
--Mike
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