Tesco, Asda and other cheap processing thread.

Well this is what Park Royal Asda managed to do with my film:

BadAsdaProcessing.jpg

(Resized it to 800x600, otherwise straight from the CD)

I scanned it myself, cropped and straightened it and touched up the dust in Picasa to make:
HammersmithBridge.jpg


So not a total loss
 
cowasaki said:
That sounds like a good deal. It is cheaper than Tescos when you add the fuel on as I don't normally shop there :)
Click to expand...


The post office might have you by the short and curlies as they have changed the rules for thickness of posts...I was going to send some 120 film in a jiffy bag and they were going to charge me £1.22..dunno if a 35mm cassette beats their thickness rule.
 
Hi,
I'm Nigel from Photo Express in Hull. I have registered in response to a request from Richard after he called us to inquire about having films developed and either printed or scanned to CD. You can find us at www.photo-express.co.uk and I have agreed with Richard that any TP members can have a 50p per film discount on any orders sent to us as long as you include your user name (although bank charges mean we must keep our minimum order charge at £4.50). We are a small business and therefore offer a personal service. We are in our 21st year and I am pleased to be on first name terms with many customers I have never met! If there are any questions you are welcome to e-mail me direct at nigel.edwards@photo-express.co.uk . I will try and keep in touch with this thread and hope that we can help.
 
excalibur2 said:
The post office might have you by the short and curlies as they have changed the rules for thickness of posts...I was going to send some 120 film in a jiffy bag and they were going to charge me £1.22..dunno if a 35mm cassette beats their thickness rule.
Click to expand...

Sending films via the post expect to pay for a small packet as films are too big to be classed as letter post. If you just stick a first class stamp on, it will be delayed for several days and incur surcharges.
 
Nigel Edwards said:
Hi,
I'm Nigel from Photo Express in Hull. I have registered in response to a request from Richard after he called us to inquire about having films developed and either printed or scanned to CD. You can find us at www.photo-express.co.uk and I have agreed with Richard that any TP members can have a 50p per film discount on any orders sent to us as long as you include your user name (although bank charges mean we must keep our minimum order charge at £4.50). We are a small business and therefore offer a personal service. We are in our 21st year and I am pleased to be on first name terms with many customers I have never met! If there are any questions you are welcome to e-mail me direct at nigel.edwards@photo-express.co.uk . I will try and keep in touch with this thread and hope that we can help.
Click to expand...


Thats a great attitude and I am sure with customer service like this you will move from being a small company to becomming a bigger company
 
excalibur2 said:
***I always get prints***

erm and how many do you throw away? Maybe be better to find a good supermarket to dev and scan to a CD, correct any faults, spots or cropping on your selected shots then instead of mickey mouse prints of 6X4" or 5X7" (which many people get), send the selected jpg files off for a 10X12 print @ 34p each.
Click to expand...

I usually don't throw any away. I might if it was an accidental shot but most of my pictures I find are good enough as they are. If I want to have a cropped picture, I send the neg to where ever I am getting the enlargements from and attach a diagram where I want it cropped, O.K for a 12x8 this is quite a bit more but I prefer it like this as I only infrequently order enlargements. Spots, dust etc are never a problem as I use a pro lab.
Besides a 'good supermarket' that I can easily get to does not exist near me. Alright there are 2 'extra' tesco's and an Asda that does photo within 10 miles of me, but I don't drive and as so they are very difficult to get to, so mail order is better.
 
Nigel Edwards said:
Hi,
I'm Nigel from Photo Express in Hull. I have registered in response to a request from Richard after he called us to inquire about having films developed and either printed or scanned to CD. You can find us at www.photo-express.co.uk and I have agreed with Richard that any TP members can have a 50p per film discount on any orders sent to us as long as you include your user name (although bank charges mean we must keep our minimum order charge at £4.50). We are a small business and therefore offer a personal service. We are in our 21st year and I am pleased to be on first name terms with many customers I have never met! If there are any questions you are welcome to e-mail me direct at nigel.edwards@photo-express.co.uk . I will try and keep in touch with this thread and hope that we can help.
Click to expand...

I shall be chucking my next film at you when I finally finish it :D
 
NickT,

Nice picture. I was just playing with Noiseware Professional whilst reading the thread and it looks awesome with no noise. You have no edits ticked or I would show you. But nice!
 
I have found that in essence quality depends on the staff in the store operatating the machine. it often varys from shift to shift and store to store
 
Richard King said:
I have found that in essence quality depends on the staff in the store operatating the machine. it often varys from shift to shift and store to store
Click to expand...

Definitely! There is a young lad at the Tescos in Leyland who always gets top results and an older woman that got finger prints all over one set of scans (but only once and they sorted it)
 
Does anyone know roughly how much it cost for the film to be processed and scanned (with or without prints, preferably without TBH) from somewhere like Boots?

While I'm just knocking off a few rolls of film for fun, if it's cheaper, I'd rather just go somewhere convenient, then go to a lab when I'm using film properly and not just messing around, getting the hang of things.
 
MagicMynx said:
Does anyone know roughly how much it cost for the film to be processed and scanned (with or without prints, preferably without TBH) from somewhere like Boots?

While I'm just knocking off a few rolls of film for fun, if it's cheaper, I'd rather just go somewhere convenient, then go to a lab when I'm using film properly and not just messing around, getting the hang of things.
Click to expand...

The cheapest place for developing and CD is Tesco at just under £3.00, I think boots CD only is about £4.00 alone, so definitely Tesco.
 
MagicMynx said:
Ahh, for that price I may as well go to the local pro lab TBH.

Thanks (y)
Click to expand...

But £3 includes processing, scanning it onto disc and creating an index print. Most pro labs would charge more than this without the scanning.
 
yeh but I can't get to a tesco easily, so by the time I've paid for travel, it'd be cheaper going to the lab.

I think Asda still do prints (the everything-but-food Asda in Byker if anyone local knows?) but I'll check out a few other places locally too.

Are truprint any good? That's who I used years ago.
 
Nattelie,

Look at post #44
 
ASDA High Wycombe did all these, I really like their matte effect paper (think they call it 'velvet' or something)

Very happy with them, and will continue to use. Never get them to scan to CD, always get prints. I like to scan in the physical prints at home.

4831019279_82771ce3d2.jpg


4674646303_ff020f4aee.jpg


4674592569_ef1ef289a1.jpg


4674681611_23d0806a48.jpg


ped
 
***I like to scan in the physical prints at home.***

erm well just acceptable providing you don't enlarge say a scanned 6X4" print too much, I used to scan medium format 8X10" prints with a very old scanner and the results were excellent viewed on a computer screen.
 
Yes that goes without saying. Any larger prints I'll have done separately using a special service. So far I have used jessops who took a scan on a negative up to A2 which looked great and another TP member is making a print of a neg for me as we speak. Really want to lean how to print myself one day.
 
Anybody near Tesco at Slough and they will develope the film only for 99p...handy if you've cocked the film up and don't wont to spend more. I've scanned the negs and they are VG i.e. no hairs and only the occasional spot.

FujiC200 from bootie @10p Pentax 35mm f3.5 dev only at Slough
pentax35mm800px.jpg


Also I noticed:- On the counter they were using a Epson 2480 for copying prints
 
Nigel Edwards said:
Hi,
I'm Nigel from Photo Express in Hull. I have registered in response to a request from Richard after he called us to inquire about having films developed and either printed or scanned to CD. You can find us at www.photo-express.co.uk and I have agreed with Richard that any TP members can have a 50p per film discount on any orders sent to us as long as you include your user name (although bank charges mean we must keep our minimum order charge at £4.50). We are a small business and therefore offer a personal service. We are in our 21st year and I am pleased to be on first name terms with many customers I have never met! If there are any questions you are welcome to e-mail me direct at nigel.edwards@photo-express.co.uk . I will try and keep in touch with this thread and hope that we can help.
Click to expand...

^
|
|
|
has anybody got results from these chaps ?
 
I decided to give Asda on more try. A very bad idea! I looked at the prints and the the CD - the colours were awful - lime green grass and orange skin tones. I decided to scan the negs myself, only to discover that there weren't any in the folder. I returned to the store, where they found them rolled up in a 35mm cassette container. On scanning them at home at 2800 dpi they were covered in dust, hairs and scratches.

So by way of examples we have:

A crop from their CD, showing the lovely palette:

AsdaGreen2.jpg


My own scan:
CorrectedAsdaGreen-1.jpg


and a typical crop from the scratched up negatives:

AsdaScratches.jpg


I don't know why they bother with a minilab. They can't make any money out of it, they're no good at it and they must get lots of complaints from the few customers that still use film.
 
Do they sell cheap digital cameras in the same area as the minilab? Could be a marketing ploy - look at the crepe prints from your film camera, and think yeuk... and decide it's time you had a proper camera, you know, one of those digital ones, like that one... ooohhh - and it's only same as getting 5 films done.... sold - one cheapo digital camera. :shrug:
 
maybe they have a lot of teens coming with their weird lomo stuff.

has anyone gotten the film back from those chaps we're having discount from ?
 
TheBigYin said:
Do they sell cheap digital cameras in the same area as the minilab? Could be a marketing ploy - look at the crepe prints from your film camera, and think yeuk... and decide it's time you had a proper camera, you know, one of those digital ones, like that one... ooohhh - and it's only same as getting 5 films done.... sold - one cheapo digital camera. :shrug:
Click to expand...

Yes they do. On the same counter in fact. I seem to remember that they had a special offer on a Fuji/Sony pink thing for about £30 a little while ago. I think I'll stick to home developed B&W in my Canons Olympus and Yashica though!
 
It's not - but maintaining correct temperatures for consistency is the tough bit, much much much more so than with BW (with which I tend to use an elbow rather than a thermometer, if at all!)
 
Last edited:
C41 is pretty easy to do, but to do consistently, and with a good colour balance, and get it bang on every film, is a pain. Problem I've found is that you I generally only process one or two films at once. The 1L Tetenal kit is good for around 20 rolls of 100 ISO C41 (a roll being a 36exp 35mm or a 120 film - 220 film counts as 2 rolls - 400ISO depletes the chemicals more, so count it as 1.5 films) if you re-use the chemicals.

With fresh chemicals, the Dev takes 3min15 seconds rising to 4 minutes for depleted, BLIX takes 4mins when fresh right up to 15 minutes by the time you're on your 20th reel. So before you start, you need to work out how many "films" you're into the kit, and decide the duration of process you'll need. I found that with the Patterson tank 3 inversions at the start of the process, a quick knock on the bench to remove bubbles, then open the tank lid (with a cloth over the gap - it sprays very nasty chemicals everywhere otherwise) as the process off-gasses a lot more than B&W, then a single inversion and tap each minute after that works okay. First 2 stages Dev and Blix are the most temperature critical (pretty much need to be nailed on 38C) - rinse can be 30-40C and the Stab bath anything between 20 and 40C.

I've also taken to shooting a frame at the start of each session with a colour check chart. That way I've got a reference where I can correct any colour drifts once scanned.


Reala100_2010-08-30_009_colour chart by The Big Yin, on Flickr

Alltogether it's a pain in the Harris - but when it Does work, it's awfully satisfying :)
 
As I said - as a process it's fairly simple. But to get consistent results is very very difficult, as you're constantly juggling the amount of time you need to give the film in the soup as the chemicals degenerate.

Also - one thing you really must not do, is rinse the film in water/photoflow as he did in the video - the stab needs to be the last thing the film gets, give it the finger-squeegee treatment, then hang it up to dry. The Stab will dry evenly without any extra wetting agents.
 
I just plotted the times from the manual on a graph, ran a smooth curve between them, and used that to come up with my timings for the first kit, noted things down and adjusted timings for second one. So far the adjusted timings are working pretty reasonably.
 
CaptainPenguin said:
Just had my first set back from Photo Express really pleased with quality and the turn around time
Click to expand...


that's the one we as a TP have a deal ? sounds good. will try to send them couple after I have a shoot. what's the resolution you got ? could you share some pics ?
 
Starastin said:
that's the one we as a TP have a deal ? sounds good. will try to send them couple after I have a shoot. what's the resolution you got ? could you share some pics ?
Click to expand...

Not suire about the resolution but when I saved them as tiff files they are 17meg in size,in the process of uploading to Flickr so I will be posting some soon
 
CaptainPenguin said:
Not suire about the resolution but when I saved them as tiff files they are 17meg in size,in the process of uploading to Flickr so I will be posting some soon
Click to expand...


sounds like about 2500x1600 or what was the size , you can check it in - properties - details and scroll down to dimensions.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top