Processing Your Film
Once you have taken your photographs you will want to see the results as soon as possible. Many places now offer film processing and claim that they give a unique and professional service; but in fact often the film is collected and sent to a central processing laboratory. Here each film is given a computer identification code and they are all joined together in one huge reel like a movie film. The films are processed and printed in rapid succession, the prints cut up and put in wallets, and back everything goes to the shop where you handed in the film.
This sort of processing does not produce results of very good quality, nor is it consistent. If you send the same negative to be printed at the same laboratory several times, the chances are that each time it will come back with a different colour cast. In order to obtain the best results with expensive equipment, or when you have taken the greatest care in composing and exposing your pictures make sure the processing laboratory is a good one.
The Professional Way
A professional photographer, especially one who uses colour reversal film, has a close relationship with the technicians at his laboratory. The laboratory will maintain the highest standards, simply because if it does not, photographers will not use it any more.
A professional laboratory can clip test film: before the technicians process the whole film they will cut off the first few frames and process them. You can then check these and ask for adjustments to the rest of the batch. They can adjust the processing in increments of as little as Vs of a stop (one stop is equivalent to the difference between f8 and f 11, or between exposure times of l/6o and V125 second).
Of course, for this to be worthwhile the film must be consistently exposed, and where the film is cut one or two frames will be lost. There is also a small extra charge for the clip test on top of the cost of processing the rest of the film. Kodachrome Professional film is bought with the processing paid for, but even this can now be clip tested and settings adjusted as necessary.
Home Processing
The more adventurous can buy home processing kits for both colour negative and colour reversal film, and also for black and white. You do not need to have a fully equipped darkroom to process film. Apart from the equipment in the kit all you need is a processing tank — these come in various sizes, depending on how many films you want to process at once — and a light-tight room or cupboard where you can load the film into the tank. Once this is done, the rest of the process is carried out in normal light, though of course you have to go back into the dark to make prints.
Pushing and Pulling
If a film is underexposed, for instance if it is uprated, it needs to be given a longer than normal development time. This is called ‘pushing’. Overexposed film is ‘pulled’ by being developed for a shorter time than normal.
These techniques are common, but they should not be used where they can be avoided because both of them cause a certain loss of picture quality: the harder a film has been pushed or pulled, the greater the loss. There is no substitute for getting your exposures spot on.
Enlarged Prints
Again, a professional laboratory will give you substantially better enlarged prints. You will be able to discuss how you want your picture cropped and positioned on the masking frame of the enlarger. If a transparency that is to be printed has a colour cast you can ask for this to be corrected. You can even have particular areas of a negative or transparency shaded or printed up to darken or brighten them. This can be important if there is a large discrepancy between the tones in highlighted areas and shadows.
Related posts:
- Black and White Film
- Lighting
- Polaroid Backs
- The Human Eye and the Camera
- Camcorders – Video Editing
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