Denver Digital Imaging E-6 down

[David_Senesac]

Received a call today from Denver Digitalimaging Center (The Slideprinter) letting me know their E-6 film developing lab has been down since last week's holiday due to a part failure and are awaiting that part that might take a few weeks to receive.

http://www.theslideprinter.com/e6-slide-developing-thank-you/

There are few professional film development labs left and would imagine there are numbers on this board that are also using that lab for developing their color film sheets. Over the past few years since Calypso Imaging closed have been using this lab without any issues and very consistent results. Their customer service is very responsive and excellent so well recommended from the person. I had sent them a box full of film last week from work over the holiday up in Redwood National Park and was starting to wonder why the film had not yet returned. After a few long 400 mile road trips up there over the last dozen years, and finally nailing some exceptional material, am willing to wait till they are back up and running versus sending work elsewhere where I might worry about the shipping or quality of development.

David

[Preston]

David,

Yes, it's certainly more difficult to find a lab, especially one that does great work with good service. Since Samy's in Santa Barbara stopped processing E-6, I sent a batch to DataChrome (http://www.data-chrome.com/mail-in_processing.html) in Orange county. Rochelle and her crew did a great job, and the turn-around was speedy. Highly recommended, especially for us CA LF guys.

I hope DDC gets their machine fixed in short order for you.

--P

[Eric Leppanen]

I also heartily recommend DataChrome. I've sent my E-6 film there for years, everything from 35mm to 8x10, and Rochelle always does a great job and has fast turn-around time.

[Daniel Stone]

Preston,
Rochelle is a single-person business, but she shares a location with a photographer, sometimes he answers the phone if she's out doing deliveries or pickups from the local shops(including Samy's Santa Ana) that send her work. She's a small business, for sure, but she does stellar work for a single-person owner/operator business IMO

FYI guys,
Rochelle(Datachrome) has my Aztek DPL8000 drum scanner in-house while I'm out of town pursuing a new line of work. So if you need drum scans, she is operating my machine currently in my absence from the So. Cal scene.
I use her pretty much exclusively for my E-6 processing, and will continue to do so since I've found the combination of her service and quality of processing the best I've encountered up till now. Since her turnaround time is (usually for me, delivered in-person to her shop) "a run over to In-N-Out and a quick stop into Samy's Santa Ana to peruse the toy section", I keep going back for more, and I know I can count on reliable, repeatable results from her shop, every time :)

-Dan

[Harley Goldman]

I starting using Data-Chrome when Samy's Santa Barbara closed their E-6 line. So far, I have been real happy with the service and processing. Rochelle has been extremely helpful and nice. I give her two thumbs up.

[Preston]

"Rochelle is a single-person business..."

I didn't know that, Daniel. Wow! Well, she certainly does do it right! More power to her, and it's up to us to support her.

--P

[jbenedict]

Contact address?

[David_Senesac]

Thanks Preston for pointing out that closer E-6 lab. Good to hear from others that her process is consistent as that is not something amateurs are going to be successful at.

[Preston]

Here ya go, J...

DataChrome - 1946 East Blair Ave Santa Ana CA 92705 - Ph: 949-863-0873

--P

[tgtaylor]

Hi David,

If you will be continuing to shoot film, especially E-6, then you should seriously consider processing it yourself. With the proper chemistry E-6 a simple process with the main “difficulty” being the time necessary to measure out 6 different chemicals accurately. Luckily I took Chemistry in college and in the lab learned the correct way to measure out volumes. But if you didn't take Chemistry in college Kodak explains how to correctly measure out volumes in a tech Pub on their website. Other than the correct volumes of each chemical you will need to process it a the correct temperature and for the correct time – each of which is easy to do if you are a careful technician. My first time processing E-6 everything was correct except that I had reversed one of the steps in the processor. After that I verify that step 1 is indeed in the step 1 slot....and step 6 is in its slot before I begin. That's it! You will always get results just as good as the best labs because you took the time to make sure that it was done correctly and used fresh chemistry one shot.

Of course this comes at a cost – namely the initial capital outlay for processing equipment, graduates, reels/tanks and the like. Also the chemistry is no longer available in convenient home user volumes but only certain steps have to be replaced more often than the rest. My motivating factor to self-process was when Calypso moved to Santa Cruz and truthfully I gave never looked back.

Thomas

[goamules]

Photographic works in Tucson, my nearest big city, does a good job. http://www.photographicworks.com/film_processing.htm I've had them do 4x5 and 5x7 color negs and transparencies.

But they don't do wet printing of color, they do a scan, and print on a printer. That is unreasonably expensive. Does ANY lab in America do wet contact color prints? I asked the forum a year ago, and the silence was deafening.

[tgtaylor]

You can drop off your E-6 and C-41 film (up to 8x10) for processing at Keeble & Shuchat Photography in Palo Alto: http://kspphoto.com/files/080510-color_proc.pdf They send it down to Swan Labs in southern California. http://www.swanphotolabs.com/swan08/pricing.php

I have no experience with Swan Labs as I do my own processing and printing but I'm sure that they do good work.

Thomas

[David Lobato]

Last night I had a conversation with Joe Aker of Aker Imaging in Houston (formerly AZ Photo Lab). He's the last photo lab in Houston and told me they are doing well enough to be sustainable and actually doing better than a few years ago. They have always been great with E-6 and recently with a large run of b&w 8X10 negatives. They also do C-41, wet printing on fiber base paper, and digital printing. The staff is excellent and it's friendly place to do business.