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Around July 2018 I decided to finally try and get some film developed. I went to the only place I know of near Pittsburgh that actually advertises film developing. Even though Walmart and Walgreen’s I think MIGHT still develop film, I can’t trust them to give me my negatives back. This place was an actual photo shop. However the price was outrageous for what I got, per roll it was like 10$ +tax for develop and scanning. And their “high res” option was 15$ per roll. I should have spent the extra 5$ per roll but I didn’t because I decided to take some very old vacation film of my mom’s and 2 rolls of my own. One of my rolls is shot on Ektar 100. My other roll was shot on an unknown random film that I had lying around. I really think this place is using some kind of cheap amazon film scanner because the noise, at least with Ektar 100, is way worse than it should be. Not to mention almost every single image has fixed pattern digital noise in the form of banding across the images. The raw scan size is 1818x1228, A very strange resolution. Maybe their 15$ “high res” scanning option uses a better scanner but I really need to get these rescanned.
All of these were shot on my Canon A1. Some shots are very old probably from 2012 or older. If you would like to buy the full size versions of any of my photos, feel free to email me! The images really do need to be rescanned first before I would feel ok with selling them, they just are not the quality they could be. But its up to you! I will post a new article if I ever do get these rescanned.
Another Update: I have rescanned these and it turns out the noise and artifacts are actually on the film, and was certainly caused by damage during the developing process. I know this because when I had these developed and scanned at Premier in Monroeville Mall, I actually had a few rolls done at the same time. All the rolls were from different mfg's so it was not pre existing damage on the film. Some of the rolls were taken on different cameras too so it isn't damage caused by the camera. Every image I got back from them had some form of these artifacts, meaning that the damage must have happened during whatever process they did on the film. I have since then began developing my own film and I have not gotten any of these artifacts. I don't know if the damage came from bad chemical process, or some kind of physical damage. I speculate it is due to dust on a film squeegie (something you should never use) causing scratches on the film, but I can't prove that. So moral of the story, develop your own or pay a friend to do it.
