Downtown Camera lab good?

[Michael R]

If I remember correctly Downtown Camera in Toronto maintained a good dip/dunk system in-house for B&W processing. Is this still a high quality lab? (this would be for 4x5 B&W negatives)

Thanks

[bob carnie]

hi Michael - They are the only lab that is piling film through both their processors... dip and dunk - brand new machines . You can ask them how many times they are running calibration strips, one a day on BW should be good depending on the volume of the machine. I send all clients to them as I do not want to process film for others. ( I do have a few clients that I still process for and have been doing this for them since 1991 ). Contact Claudia Mac or Harry Mac they are the owners and really decent people. I am not sure how much large format they see these days so you want to email them in advance to check their guidelines.

[Michael R]

That’s great to hear, Bob. Thanks for this. I’ve been researching and experimenting with development uniformity (read: deep, dark, scary rat hole) and I want to get some test films developed by quality labs doing dip/dunk. There’s a place in Montreal called Borealis that also does quite a bit of this (in fact I think Downtown Camera outsources some of their roll film E6 to Borealis) but I’d like to try a few good places hence my question about Downtown Camera. I remember reading they had acquired a new Hostert for B&W relatively recently.

I also want to sample Jobo/Expert drum processes. There’s one local lab here that apparently uses a Jobo with Expert drums to process 4x5. I had access to a nice new CPP-3 at a school lab here for a time but covid ruined that for now. Grrr.

Thanks again for the info.

hi Michael - They are the only lab that is piling film through both their processors... dip and dunk - brand new machines . You can ask them how many times they are running calibration strips, one a day on BW should be good depending on the volume of the machine. I send all clients to them as I do not want to process film for others. ( I do have a few clients that I still process for and have been doing this for them since 1991 ). Contact Claudia Mac or Harry Mac they are the owners and really decent people. I am not sure how much large format they see these days so you want to email them in advance to check their guidelines.