Markus, my experiences are all out of the ordinary because up until May
I owned and operated my own lab. 120 format film is harder to find but
still readily available -- you might simply need to call the local
distributor and have them recommend a store to shop from.
Contact sheets are frequently more expensive than sets of small prints,
because labs that cater to wedding/portrait pros have automated systems
for making proofs. There's really no automated way to make a contact
sheet, so while the material expenditure will be less, the actual time
taken to do the job is significantly more, because a person has to do
it by hand, one roll at a time. Here, develop and contact of 120 6x7
was about $20 CDN, while develop and 4x5 inch prints was about $12 CDN.
Many one-hour style labs are capable of processing 120 film, however
that does not mean that the operators of the lab know how to do it or
are any good at it. You're probably best to find the lab that the
local wedding/portrait guys send their film to.
Scanning: there's good news and bad news about 120 scanning. The good
news is that you can get away with a crappier scanner because the
negative is so big if you're only making, say, 8x10 prints. I've seen
scans from 6x7 from whatever the newest $500 Epson flatbed is, and they
don't stink. It doesn't compare to my Sprintscan 120, but the cost
difference is massive. However, if you see a used or reconditioned
Sprintscan 120 on the cheap, I highly recommend it. Yeah, it's slow as
molasses. The results are worth it, though. I have a dozen 24x36 inch
prints on the walls of my house that are from either 67 or 35mm,
scanned on that scanner and printed on an Epson 7500.
-Aaron
On Mar 22, 2006, at 7:45 AM, Markus Maurer wrote:
Hi Aaron
I have never used a mid format camera but of course would love to
try/get
one like the lovely Pentaxes.
Can you tell me:
How easy is it to get roll film nowadays and what are the cost of film
and
development?
I live in Switzerland and have not checked prices yet but see the
cameras
itself at quite good prices at auctions.
Do you have to send the films to specialized labs to develop and are
they
hard to find today
or can every lab handle them?
Do you usually order a print with each shot or an archive copy sheet
or only
the developed negatives
to scan them later on the computer or are you one luckier people that
can do
it yourself?
greetings
Markus
-----Original Message-----
From: Aaron Reynolds [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Wednesday, March 22, 2006 1:15 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: DS vs DL viewfinder?
On Mar 22, 2006, at 12:57 AM, Godfrey DiGiorgi wrote:
If you grew up with Rollei TLRs and Hasselblad SLRs, you'd think
your
35mm camera was like looking down a dark tunnel.
Going from the 67 to something like the ME Super or the LX, I always
took a little while to adjust to how tiny the finder was. Moving
from
the 67 to the DS2 was a real shock, but I'm getting used to it.
-Aaron
