As you know I have an interest in film photography. I have for some time been trying to learn what resources are available to the film photographer especially those working in large format. While I am not going to pine on about the demise of analog photography I have noticed that resources, services and products are still becoming harder to access. The local film lab in my city while still developing C41, E6 and Black and White is doing so on a much less frequent basis causing me some concern about the freshness of chemistry when they do actually do a run. C41 seems to still be getting run more frequently than E6 which is now less than one time a week.
As such I am posting this link to a resource I recently came across. I also put a link in the Information and Inspiration section of this blog which will take you to to the Ilford Lab Direct. They provide film development and film printing and scanning. As best I can tell while they develop, print and scan roll film sizes, they only develop/process large format film 4x5, 5x7 and 8x10. It does not appear they will scan or print those sizes. They do however process both C41 and E6 along with Black and White using Ilford chemistry. I would assume that anyone going into this business linked to a manufacturer would have reasonable quality standards but I have not yet used them myself. I don't have a dark room and at this time don't have the time or desire to set one up. My work flow is to shoot film, wet scan it with the Epson V700 Pro flat bed scanner and then print photos using various ink jet or laser printers I have at my disposal.
If anyone has used this service please leave comments for me and others.
