I have a Historic American Buildings Survey to do of 37 buildings that will generate nearly 1000 sheets of 4x5 b&w film. This volume is impossible to do myself in a timely manner. Any recomendations for b&w labs that can do archival processing in this volume?
Thanks,
Kirk
at age 73:
"The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep"
Kirk,
You may wish to try Cox B&W Labs in the Sacramento Area. He does a lot of work for the State Library etc... Jeff is a real good guy. If you speak with him tell him one of his 'camping buddies' sent you his way.
Cheers!
Link: http://www.coxblackandwhitelab.com/index.html
Steve
Kirk, I would also be extremely interested to know (and absolutely dumbfounded to discover) that many labs are left.
Even if you managed to locate the last professional quality b&w LF lab in NYC, the trick would be to get the principal himself (not his new assistant) to handle such a large job. Volume and quality are not often good bedfellows.
Offhand, my first suggestion would be to hire a temporary in-house lab assistant, if you can find one.
Plan B (with its own set of challenges) might be to enlist the aid of some old, retired, chemically-fastidious fussbudgets from this site...
MV Labs in New York would be a possibility. www.mvlabs.com.
I'm guessing you'll be producing these negs over the course of some time, and not dropping off a thousand sheets at the lab for pickup the next day. With a 3.5 gallon tank line, ten 4-up hangers per batch, replenishable developer, it's not that unreasonable to do this kind of volume. How many buildings are you planning to shoot in a day? How many sheets per day, presuming you process at the end of the day or the next day?
Image Control does excellent work in Orange County, California. They use a Refrema machine with Xtol chemistry. Their phone number is (714) 545-1385. Ron Regev is the owner and is a great guy to work with.
John, are you looking for a part time job?
I would second Cox labs in Sacramento. Fantastic work, and Jeff is a really great guy; he spent an extra 10 minutes explaining something to me (I'm a little dense, sometimes) and it was just for two sheets of TMax. He truly loves photography and the B+W experience.
My friends Edgar Praus and Mike Parks have been doing custom B&W processing, commercial prints, and archival museum prints for over twenty years. He gets work from all over the US and maintains high enough prices to do it right, but because of being located in Rochester he isn't as outrageously expensive as NYC labs.
Website: Praus Productions.
Edgar has a RIT MFA and shoots a ton of large format - 5x7 and 8x10. See The American Highway Project. Gotta keep those MFAs off the street.
Sorry - cannot reccomend a lab, but a bit off topic, I am facinated by your project. did a google search and turned up the web site.
Question - yes it should be self evident - but how did you determine to use B&W sheet film? The reaosn I ask I am chair of ht elocal heritage committe here, and I ahve tried to explain th eimportance of not using digital to take pictures of heritage buildings slated for demolition, but love to hear how it comes from your side
(BTW - I'm in Canada)
thanks
joe
eta gosha maaba, aaniish gaa zhiwebiziyin ?
Joseph,
US HABS standards require a minimum size film of 4x5 and only in b&w.
Thanks all for the suggestions. I am checking some of them out.
Thanks,
Kirk
at age 73:
"The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep"
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