E6 Processing

[Doug Dolde]

I saw this on Photocraft's website. The part that causes concern is the remark about "forseeable future". Not a good sign for film shooters.

Why did E6 Processing prices go up on January 1, 2006

As many photographers have switched to digital capture the overall volume of processing has decreased. Unfortunately, our fixed costs have continued to increase. Further, we have trimmed variable costs over which we have control as much as possible. We are now at the point where to maintain the high quality that you expect from Photo Craft we must increase E6 processing prices.

While many labs have dropped their E6 lines (or closed altogether), Photo Craft is committed to maintaining the highest quality E6 processing available anywhere. Many of our photographers still view film as the best image capture medium available and we will continue to serve film photographers for the foreseeable future.

Roy McCutchen, President, Photo Craft Laboratories, Inc.

[Eric Leppanen]

My local E6 lab has not raised prices at this point, but has reduced their working hours and the number of E6 runs per day. Based on what I am hearing, there will be further E6 lab consolidation over the next year, and aside from a few major metropolitan areas, E6 processing will eventually be performed largely via mail order, and hopefully at that point the market will stabilize. Certainly not ideal, but not the end of the world, either, given that LF has thrived as mostly a mail-order enterprise for the last few years. It's almost like shooting Kodachrome again, which for me at least always required mail-order processing.

[Jim Jirka]

Still is a $1.10 cheaper than local.

[Ben Hopson]

It is a shame that prices are going up for E6 processing at many labs. However, looking at the prices at Photocraft they are still charging 1/2 what the local lab I occasionally use charges. That is for 4x5 and almost 1/2 for 8x10 E6.

[Patrik Roseen]

I live in Stockholm, Sweden, and the lab that used to have the lowest price for E6 development recently when bankrupt. They always did a very good job and used to have a large professional customer base...they now only do C41 (not even black&white). Less people are using transparency film these days and even fewer use 4x5 sheet film. I will pay what it costs and hope the remaining labs can survive from what we pay...I'm still not prepared to do E6 myself although I do all my B&W development myself.

[Lon Overacker]

Doug/all,

I recently had a lengthy discussion with Dave Bodkin of PhotoCraft and talked about this very thing - well, not the pricing necessarily. But he indicated that they will be in the E6 processing for a long time and he said something to the effect: "We want to be one of the last remaining..."

While I think small, local shops will continue to close up, I feel pretty confident we'll be able to get E6 processing for a long time. Of course, supply and demand will dictate prices and they will slowly edge up. Local processing for me is still 2-3 times more expensive than PhotoCraft.

On the plus side, my overall film/processing costs for 4x5 have gone down. With the availability of various forms of Velvia on Ebay at very good prices.... the film cost is less than a $1 a shot. Previously buying new, I was paying $2 a shot. So film has gone down and processing has inched up a bit, but I'm paying much less overall for film and processing than I was 10yrs ago.

BTW, in my experience, PhotoCraft has always had consistent, excellent quality AND customer service has always been outstanding.

Lon

[jon fritsch]

Kudos to you all for this discussion. I was looking for a more affordable place than the one I was already sending my film to, and because of this thread I now have one. I may be able to afford shooing 4x5 again. 3.00 a sheet for processing was enough to make me wary of pushing the cable release button very often.