Lab versus DIY film developing
Following on from my last entry on how I develop my film, I figured it might be good to talk about the pros and cons of lab scans versus DIY, and why a client might prefer one over the other.
From the photographer's perspective there are two main advantages to doing it yourself over sending it out to a lab. Firstly, after the initial outlay for equipment (see earlier post for a list of the essentials), the cost of developing per roll is a lot cheaper than sending it out - especially for black and white film. At its most efficient, a bottle of Rodinal is about $15 and can process over 160 rolls of 35mm film (assuming you do 1:100 dilution and 2 rolls at a time). That's about 10 cents a roll. When you compare that to a cheap lab, where BW film is often more expensive than color, you might be paying $15-20 per roll for a dev and scan! Even factoring in the cost of a flatbed scanner, you can see that it'll pay for itself many times over. Color film (or higher quality BW developing) isn't as efficient, but you're still looking at a couples of dollars a roll at most.
The second advantage to the photographer is control - both over the development process and the scanning. I have found that learning how to tweak concentration, time, and temperature has helped me get the most out of my film photography. I am much more happy with the overall quality of my images now than I was using lab scans. Now, that's not to say that there aren't advantages to using a lab - just that I liked the control of how the end product looked.
Fire hydrant on Acros film, self dev and scanA high-contrast photograph of a fire hydrant on film
I was above to crush the shadows almost to black on this image, even though the photo was taken in daylight, because I was in charge of the development and scanning. This was a test shot on my Retina IIIc camera and 80mm lens, and paying full price for a lab scan didn't make sense when I had no guarantee that anything would come out at all!
The lab dev and scans though have two corresponding advantages. The first one is consistency: a good lab will use fresh chemicals and take care not to damage negatives, and have experienced lab technicians help fix contrast, exposure, and white balance issues during the scanning process. These are skills that are NOT obvious or intuitive, and frankly that's part of why lab scans aren't cheap. The scans are also captured using high-end machinery, which is much more likely to output high-quality images every time than a home scanning set-up. Of course if you don't like the way the lab tech has processed and scanned your negatives you're stuck - but on the whole they're pretty good in my experience. Their second advantage is time - while small batches of film can be done very quickly (easily next-day turnaround), for many rolls it can simply be faster and much less stress to have the rolls shipped off and the images emailed back to you! Labs process many, many rolls every single day as they have automated batch processing - there simply isn't a way to keep up doing it yourself, and you might find yourself stuck indoors working with negatives when you could be out doing a paid photoshoot. Taking into account your own time is crucial when deciding how to managing your film, and how to price your photography! Remember that digital photographers are charging for their time and expertise in Photoshop and Lightroom - film photographers should be no different in accounting for their time and expertise in development and scanning.
Ocean Sunrise, lab dev and scanAn ocean sunrise on Ektar film.
This image is a great example of the pros and cons of lab scans - they absolutely did a fantastic job with the exposure and colors here. The negative was over-exposed and when I looked at it myself I wasn't as able to get the same result without fiddling. However, the annoying dust-spot just to the left of center would have been avoided if I'd seen it myself and re-scanned the negative!
So how does this translate to the client experience? Well it depends on all of those things. Do they want a specific photographer's style and look? If that look is the result of their personal process and preferences then it would be best to go to a photographer who does their work themselves. If they don't care as much about a specific aesthetic, but do want a quick, reliable turnaround, then it might be more important to go with a lab dev and scan. Depending on how the photographer charges for their time, it's likely that the overall price will be a wash, but it may end up being more or less expensive depending on the type of photoshoot and the number of images required. I would recommend that anyone looking to work with a film photographer ask about the options for development and scanning, and how that might impact things like timelines, cost, and image quality and aesthetic.