Just a heads up, I’ve uploaded the film tech sheets for the following films:
If you plan to send any C-41 film into Simple Film Lab, feel free to check the tech sheets out and look at the downloadable sample images.
Enjoy!
Just a heads up, I’ve uploaded the film tech sheets for the following films:
If you plan to send any C-41 film into Simple Film Lab, feel free to check the tech sheets out and look at the downloadable sample images.
Enjoy!
Get your rolls of 35mm film ready! For the entire month of September, you can get two 35mm rolls of C-41 film developed for the price of one roll. That comes out to $2.50 per roll.
This applies to developing only of 35mm C-41 color negative film, so if you want us to also scan your film, then you will still need to pay the standard per frame cost for each roll.
This promotion is only valid for orders placed during the month of September 2018. There is no real hard upper limit to how many rolls you can send in, but if you do something like send in 500 rolls, then we’ll have to have a conversation.
When you see the 2 for 1 C-41 development special pop up in the store, you can start placing processing orders and send your film in.
I’ve updated the tech sheet for Fomapan 200 and added an official tech sheet for Fomapan 400. Both films now are developed with replenished XTOL to the ISO standard contrast 0.62, so check out the available tech sheets if sending film in to Simple Film Lab for exposure guidance and sample DNG files so you’ll know what to expect if sending film in to be processed.
It should be noted that the tech sheets are just films that we’ve officially looked at. We develop all black and white and C-41 films, so if you’ve shot film that we don’t have listed, that’s not a problem. We can still develop it and scan it in for you, we just don’t have an official position on how to expose it and such because we haven’t officially looked at it.
I’ve published the tech sheet and sample images for Kodak Gold 200 film. Check it out here, and if sending your Gold 200 film in to Simple Film Lab to develop, just download the order form and send it in.
Enjoy!
The Kodak Ektar 100 review/tech sheet has been published. If you want to send your film in to Simple Film Lab for processing, please refer to the tech sheet for information and details.
Just download the order form and send it in.
The Kodak ColorPlus 200 review/tech sheet has been published. If you want to send your film in to Simple Film Lab for processing, please refer to the tech sheet for information and details.
Just download the order form and send it in.
The Simple Film Lab film processing order form has been updated to include C-41 color negative film processing.
Please download it and start sending in your color C-41 film to be processed.
Enjoy!
Kodak Ektar 100
Yes, it’s about to be here. Simple Film Lab will start accepting C-41 color negative film for processing and scanning in the month of June, 2018.
Color is a lot harder to do than Black and White, and it took a while for me to figure out how to do C-41 color negative film in a way that would be repeatable and have fairly accurate colors, but still allow the character of each film to come through once scanned in.
I’ve been able to process C-41 film for a long time and even had my own Adobe Photoshop based color workflow, but it really only worked for one film: Kodak Ektar 100, and it wasn’t really viable to do on a large scale or for other people. If this is to be a service I want to offer to others, then I need a way to provide an equivalent to what you get with RA-4 analog color prints, but digitally in Adobe Lightroom which is a fully color managed environment.
So, lots of research, lots of testing, lots of studying the DNG spec, lots of code tweaks to Simple Image Tools (the film scanning toolset developed by me for Simple Film Lab), and a lot later than I would have preferred, it’s done. And it works.
So, what do you get? Basically, the same as my Black and White film processing service, except the output is in full on, glorious, 32 bit floating point, linear light color, as an Adobe Digital Negative file. It is the color film vision that I’ve had for a while, and in my humble opinion, is the best hybrid workflow for color negative film. Bar None.
What you get from other labs is inferior if it is not at least correctly color conformed Adobe DNG files. Jpegs and tiff files have their uses, but frankly, if that’s what the lab you’re using is offering as the output of scanning your film after processing it, then they are not doing you or anybody else a favor. Like it or not, anybody who takes any serious amount of pictures uses Adobe Lightroom and should demand to get Lightroom native DNG files of their film scans. Anything else can be an option, but should not be the default. Period. End of Discussion. If you are a film lab and you are reading this, consider this post as a notice. The film scanning gold standard is correctly color conformed 32 bit floating point DNG files that behave the same way as a DNG file from a digital camera. If you don’t know how to do that, then please go figure it out and start doing it before your customers figure out that what you are giving them could be so much better and become my customers.
Film scans from Simple Image Tools does things like make Lightroom’s color temperature and white balancing actually accurate. A daylight film shot during the day has whites that look white. Did you shoot your daylight film indoors under fluorescent lights? No problem, just select that type of lighting under the Lightroom WB drop-down, or use the eye dropper to change it. Did you shoot your Tungsten balanced film outside during the day? Also, no problem. Just select “Daylight” in the WB dropdown tool. It actually works the way it’s supposed to work.
The same goes for the exposure. In fact, all of Adobe’s Lightroom Develop Module tools work the way you would expect them to work as if you shot the picture digitally, but in reality, it was shot on film.
So what is this going to cost? Well, I’m still crunching the numbers. C-41 chemistry is quite a bit more expensive than black and white chemistry and I’m still working out what the real cost per roll is, however, expect me to have it worked out and have an order form available for download within the next few days. I’m looking to follow the same model as I do for Black and White film processing, just to keep things simple.
With that all being said, yes, C-41 color negative film processing is about to happen at Simple Film Lab.
Kodak Ektar 100? Yes.
Kodak Portra 400? Yes.
Kodak Portra 160? Yes.
Fuji PRO 400H? Yes.
Pretty much any C-41 film? Pretty much Yes.
The above image is super cheap Kodak ColorPlus 200.
Color checker charts are one thing. What about real pictures? I’m glad you asked. I’ve been uploading sample images to my Flickr account and plan to create tech sheets with full DNG sample files to download for all the Color negative emulsions currently on the market today.
I’ve already shot Ektar 100, Portra 160, Portra 400, PRO 400H, Gold 200, Ultramax 400, and ColorPlus 200. I have Portra 800, Fujicolor 200, Fujicolor 400, Fujicolor 800, Lomography CN100, CN400, and CN800 in my possession and queued up have sample images shot, developed, and scanned and plan to search out and acquire as many other C-41 emulsions as I can to generate sample images for.
If you have a preferred C-41 emulsion that’s not on this list that you’d like to see, then let me know via the contact form and I’ll see what I can do about it. That being said, C-41 is very standardized, and once you get one emulsion working with Adobe Lightroom, the same thing pretty much works for every emulsion. There are differences between the emulsions (just like there are differences between digital cameras), but once you understand what those differences are and how to deal with them in a standardized way, it stops mattering and just works.
So, keep an eye out for an updated order form, and I look forward to processing your C-41 color film really soon.
Just a quick heads up: I’ve published the tech sheet for Japan Camera Hunter StreetPan 400 film in the Film Review/Tech Sheets section.
You can find it here.
If you send your StreetPan film in to Simple Film Lab, please refer to the tech sheet so you’ll know what to expect. It includes sample images along with downloadable DNG files to look at.
Enjoy!
Our Order Form has been updated.
There have been a couple of refinements and some additions, detailed below:
You can now pay via credit card, or you can pay via PayPal. Just put your PayPal address in the same spot as the credit card number, and send payment when you drop your film in the mail. I’ll correlate the payment with the email address. You can alternatively just wait for me to receive your film and send you a PayPal payment request.
This option has been refined to reflect a change in time (which affects film speed and contrast) in 60 second increments. If you want finer grained control over that, then you can still specify a custom time in the custom film development section.
The default option here has been changed to develop only. If you want scans, you will have to select something. This is to reduce the amount of confusion about what type of scan you’ll be receiving. Please refer to the scan types available to see what you get with each one.
You can now request that your film be developed with a number of Ilford’s line of developers, namely, DD-X, Ilfosol S, Microphen, and Perceptol. We may add HC/LC29 in the future, but for now, this is a pretty significant increase in choice.
This section is for us to communicate to you! When we send your film back to you, we also send your order form back to you. What you can expect to see here is the twin check(s) of the film you sent in, and detailed notes of your development session for future reference. This way, as you send more film in, you have a frame of reference and can request changes or tweaks from there.
Enjoy!
You must be logged in to post a comment.