A cautionary tale...
I remember being excited at the prospect of such a fast film
as Kodak TMax p3200, back when I was still taking my film to
a department store to be shipped off to a cheap bulk lab.
I shot a roll at 6400, wrote "Push to 6400" on the envelope,
and dropped it off ... and got back darkness. Woefully
underexposed. You could tell I'd exposed the film, but it
was hard to figure out what I'd been pointing the camera at.
Several months later, while talking to the lab's customer
service rep about something else, it was mentioned that the
lab does not do any push processing. So apparently what I
had shot at 6400 had been developed on a 1000 film. It probably
goes without saying that I was annoyed. Why had they not just
returned the envelope to me with a note saying "we don't
push"?
I took my next roll to a camera store, and got much more exciting
results. I eventually stopped using bulk labs altogether
(mostly for QC reasons, but also because none of them could print
as much of the frame as I had seen in the viewfinder). Of
the two labs I use now, I'd be quite happy with having one of
them handle my TMZ if I didn't know that the other lab works
PFM* with the stuff. So some types of film go to one lab and
some go to the other lab, and for some it depends on what I
need done with it -- they're both good, they each have certain
strengths ...
... and as I've said before, TMZ is my friend. I spend way
too much time in the dark.
-- Glenn
* "PFM" = "Pure ... Magic"
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