Film Developing in the UK

If Adds lease the equipment and cancel the lease, it is cheaper for the owner to leave it on Asda's property until they find a new leasee (if they ever do).
 
Asda' photo departments are now owned by the photo booth people Photo-Me
 
DaveWilliams said:
Found my way here searching on Google for a Lab to send some 35mm off to for dev and scan. Looking for local options instead of Canadian Film Labs or Carmencita, which seem to be very popular. Thanks for the FilmDev info, just about to pop a couple of Agfavista Plus rolls off to them now to see how they come out. Price seems very reasonable.
Click to expand...

Just wanted to follow up on my previous post to say that FilmDev did a great job. They have now developed and scanned 14 35mm C41 rolls for me, consumer grade films, and the service has been good quality and fast. Scans have been clean and not needed much PP, just minor contrast and/or exposure adjustments. I selected their lowest level of sharpening and they also provided the unsharpened scans as well so I could compare - I was happy with the low level. Yet to send them anything on something like Portra or any B&W but I'm just getting re-learning how to shoot film so those will come in time.
 
stevenelawson said:
Hi Steven, I'm in Glasgow too and my local Kodak shop, at The Avenue in Newton Mearns, will process and scan to CD a roll of Ilford XP2 in their C41 developer for £7.99. Obviously they do colour too.
Click to expand...
That's handy to know! I've shot my first two rolls of film and want to get them developed to see what they're like or of the camera even works! That price seams cheaper than posting to an online company too.
 
stevenelawson said:
Hi Steven, I'm in Glasgow too and my local Kodak shop, at The Avenue in Newton Mearns, will process and scan to CD a roll of Ilford XP2 in their C41 developer for £7.99. Obviously they do colour too.
Click to expand...

I popped in today Steven and asked to get 2 rolls of "Poundland" colour film developed which cost £7.99 each and should be ready by Saturday. Unfortunately they don't do develop B&W :(
 
Steven001 said:
I popped in today Steven and asked to get 2 rolls of "Poundland" colour film developed which cost £7.99 each and should be ready by Saturday. Unfortunately they don't do develop B&W :(
Click to expand...

outrageous and what's worse you don't get them done in a few hours for that price.
 
excalibur2 said:
outrageous and what's worse you don't get them done in a few hours for that price.
Click to expand...

I know, I think it's quite expensive. It's the first rolls I've shot as well so I don't even know if the camera works! I can see this working out quite expensive, especially if you're paying £5-£7 for a roll of film and £8-£10 to develop each roll!
 
Film dev is £3 a roll for a c41 dev and small scan. Minimum order of £5. No postal costs back so you only pay outward postage.

I get small scans for test rolls or for stuff I'm not sure about. I can re-scan at home if I can be bothered. I usually get the dev & medium colour scans @ £5 a roll. I tend to go for small black and white unless I think there's going to be a lot of really good images. I mostly do C41 and use XP2 for black and white as much as possible.
 
Steven001 said:
I think I will use them from now on, I heard the postage has become more expensive now though? What's the best way to package the rolls of film? And do you tend to get small or medium scans? Sorry for all the questions!
Click to expand...

Jiffy bag and 2nd class post is £2.80, when filmdev receive your film they usually take up to a day to scan and put your jpgs on the internet for you to download..they send your negs back to you free. For posting here (on the net), a small scan is good enough and depending on the print enlargement will determine the scan neccessary e.g. you can just scrape through for quality for an A4 print at a small scan on many shots, maybe for portratiture though the pixels might annoy.
 
Thanks guys, I appreciate your help. If the camera and lens work without any problems, I'll probably just order small scans because I don't plan on printing anything bigger than A4. That works out not bad at £3 for a colour film and £7 for a B&W film. Do you normally ask for TIFF files?
 
Steven001 said:
Thanks guys, I appreciate your help. If the camera and lens work without any problems, I'll probably just order small scans because I don't plan on printing anything bigger than A4. That works out not bad at £3 for a colour film and £7 for a B&W film. Do you normally ask for TIFF files?
Click to expand...

Well tiff or jpg?..some say no difference in quality, but the theory goes that it you are going to alter your files in say Photoshop then tiff is better as the theory goes if you keep saving many times in jpg the quality deteriorates.
 
Steven001 said:
Thanks guys, I appreciate your help. If the camera and lens work without any problems, I'll probably just order small scans because I don't plan on printing anything bigger than A4. That works out not bad at £3 for a colour film and £7 for a B&W film. Do you normally ask for TIFF files?
Click to expand...

Bear in mind that the small scans are effectively 2 megapixel files. I don't think this really does A4 well; you'll often view A4 reasonably close up. In addition, there's not much room for cropping. I usually go for the medium sized scans from Filmdev. Brian (@excalibur2 ) is used to getting his scans from Asda for 6d each, so I think he's just going for the same size!

With Filmdev you can ask for both JPEG and TIFF (8 bit), no extra charge. I usually get both, but only use the TIFF if it's a shot with some value. Otherwise I load the JPEGs into Aperture and process these (they are saved at quite high quality). TBH I can't really see the difference between the JPEGs and TIFFs in terms of quality, even after processing with Aperture. I did notice a bit of a difference loading them into Affinity Photo, in terms of the histogram if not the visible quality.
 
Steven001 said:
I popped in today Steven and asked to get 2 rolls of "Poundland" colour film developed which cost £7.99 each and should be ready by Saturday. Unfortunately they don't do develop B&W :(
Click to expand...
Like I said, they will develop Ilford XP2, which is a black and white film that can be developed using C41 colour processing, but not traditional bw films
 
Also, while FilmDev is good, their bw processing is very expensive - I just got three rolls of 36 done (one Acros, two Fomapan) at £12 per roll!
 
It's £9 a roll for a medium scan from film dev. Ilford charge £6.75 + the cost of the scan per roll so aren't any cheaper for more than one roll even though they pay the postage both ways. Cheapest scan is £3.50 but their high quality scan is £12 on top. Filmdev rotate them all so everything is in the correct orientation which I haven't seen other scanning services do. Ilford don't.

I haven't found anywhere that does black and white with similar quality for less than the £9 a roll with the medium scan but I'd like to find somewhere just as a spare. Once you add in return postage costs and different scanning costs of other places then it's surprising how similar most of them are price wise.
 
Last edited:
stevenelawson said:
Also, while FilmDev is good, their bw processing is very expensive - I just got three rolls of 36 done (one Acros, two Fomapan) at £12 per roll!
Click to expand...

It is expensive which is why I do my own at home, doddle. 30 mins and you can sit and have a brew while they dry. Sorted. ;)
 
srichards said:
This is spreadsheet is quite good for working out who does what and for what price. I think @ChrisR made it a while ago: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet...unXEHQzeJ6jHeoT7sZZylDSzjo/edit#gid=115803643

The cost is why I'm looking at Devving my own as well. £3 & £5 a roll I can live with but £7 & £9 is a bit much.
Click to expand...
I try and keep it up to date, so if anyone notices prices being out (or errors in the calculations), please let me know. OTOH no promises, you do need to check for yourselves!
 
Andysnap said:
It is expensive which is why I do my own at home, doddle. 30 mins and you can sit and have a brew while they dry. Sorted. ;)
Click to expand...
Is is B&W only you develop? I suppose it depends on how much film I plan to shoot. I would like to do it for the experience of actually "creating" the final image, but I asume the initial outlay is quite expensive?
 
Steven001 said:
Is is B&W only you develop? I suppose it depends on how much film I plan to shoot. I would like to do it for the experience of actually "creating" the final image, but I asume the initial outlay is quite expensive?
Click to expand...

No, I do colour as well.
The up front costs aren't huge and you will soon recoup them by not paying £5 a roll to get them professionally developed. The weak point for me is in the scanning which is why I usually send any important colour rolls off to Filmdev, their scanning is considerably better than mine.
There is definitely a bit of magic in developing your own film and it completes the process rather nicely.
 
It unfortunately looks like Club 35 is gone as their website is unavailable and they no longer show up on Google. I'll try again in a few days, but if they have gone it's unfortunate as I always used them for my C41 due to their low dev + print prices (I usually just like flicking through and scanning the best frames with my dedicated 35mm scanner) and freepost address. It's been at least 18 months though since I last sent them anything.
 
That is a shame, @s162216 . I haven;t used them much but they were reasonably well priced for E6, given the freepost options. Odd to see them so totally disappearing from Google. AG about the same price, though, and recent reports have been encouraging.

EDIT: Checked the Wayback Machine (archive.org) and the last useful gather was June 2016 with this message:

Unfortunately we are closing down and no longer taking orders. We would like to take this opportunity to thank our loyal customers for their business over the years.
Click to expand...

:(:(:(
 
Last edited:
You could try AG Photolab, they do E6. http://www.ag-photolab.co.uk/

I've not used them for E6 but they've always done a good job of C41 and B&W developing for me, so I'll be giving them a go with E6 as soon as I've shot some this summer. :)
 
Last edited:
gunnar said:
srichards, looks like it :(

So who do people use for slide development/scanning? Any recommendations?
Click to expand...
Peak or Darkroom UK, although I've not used either for scanning.
 
I always use AG for my E6 and 120, always provide good service and quality
 
Has anyone used AG photographic recently for film developing?
I set up an account after I paid for developing. So far can't log in to the account, even the password reset does not work.
I was also lead to expect an email confirming my order (i have the number for the transaction)

Is this normal?
Quite nervous about send my films over as I'm not convinced my order is processed.
 
eeyore said:
Has anyone used AG photographic recently for film developing?
I set up an account after I paid for developing. So far can't log in to the account, even the password reset does not work.
I was also lead to expect an email confirming my order (i have the number for the transaction)

Is this normal?
Quite nervous about send my films over as I'm not convinced my order is processed.
Click to expand...
Have you tried ringing them?
 
I sent film to them on Saturday and had an email Tuesday to say it's in the lab for processing, I've not had anything since but one of the rolls is slide film so it'll take them longer to process than Colour Neg/B&W.

The last few weeks I've found them to have a 24 to 48 hour turn around on B&W/Colour Neg developing and scanning.
 
Did you try to log in on the AG Photographic website, or the AG Photolab website? It's this one you need for film processing: http://www.ag-photolab.co.uk/

I usually just follow the click tabs for whichever film I want, etc. then pay via my PayPal account, so don't know about logging in. Maybe give that method a go?
 
Tried both sites and tried again just now, no joy. Will give them a call shortly.
I pied with my card not via PayPal (The one time I didn't!)
I've checked my bank account and it looks like its not been taken out :confused: I did have an issue a few weeks back where sage pay took ages to process....:tumbleweed:

:film:
(Just not getting it developed!)
 
Stupid question: how do various labs return processed 120 film?

In a roll or do they cut and sleeve it?
 
Most labs will cut and sleeve in standard Kenro style sleeves.
 
gunnar said:
Stupid question: how do various labs return processed 120 film?

In a roll or do they cut and sleeve it?
Click to expand...

Almost all will cut and sleeve it. If you wanted something different though, it is often possible to request otherwise.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top