About Us
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Colour Film (C41) Developing
First we start by preparing the film for developing. This involves extracting and trimming the film end so that it can safely fed into our machine. The machine we use here is a Noritsu V30 (Named because it can develop 30 films per hour).
The machine is made up of several temperature controlled tanks for developer, bleach, fix and stabaliser. Each film passes through each tank for a precise and set time to ensure the quality of every film is uniform.
After exposure to the developing chemicals the machine will begin to dry the films before outputting the negatives ready to scan.
B&W Film Developing
This process is a little more techincal as for the majority of black and white films it must be done by hand. However the process starts the same with proper preparation of the film. As the film must be removed from its casing this is done in a darkroom to remove the possibility of light exposure.
Once this is done the film is placed into a special lightproof developing container where chemicals (Developer, Stop, Fix) must be added at the correct temperature and for the correct amount of time. This varies based on the type of film so this is where our years of experience come in handy.
After this the film needs to be thorougly rinsed and left hung to dry to avoid any streaking.
Scanning Developed Negatives
Once the negatives are developed the process is the same regardless of if the film is B&W or Colour.
Here at Home Labs we use a Noritsu HS-1800 scanner, as one of the most high resolution scanners on the market it allows us to scan and correct films with precision every time. Offering 4 different resolution choices from low res jpg (good for practise films) or high res tiff (a lossless image perfect for editing).
In the future we are looking at acquiring addional types of scanners and giving our customers the option of their choice of scanner.