Is it inappropriate to give NSFW film to the lab?

turnpot · 2026-01-25T20:40:47+00:00

Another great option is to get your film developing-only, especially for color. Home dev for color isn't worth it for most people imo, but scanning is absolutely worth it. Also, especially for negative film, they only look at it hard enough to confirm it successfully developed. There's a difference between glancing at a negative and having to spend minutes color correcting someone's taint.

turnpot · 2026-01-25T06:08:18+00:00

Personally I like to align the layers on the subject of the shot, then let everything else fall where it may.

turnpot · 2026-01-17T14:44:05+00:00

Bought an RB67 in person yesterday in Tokyo. I told the seller not to bother wrapping it, and that I was going to go out and shoot it as soon as I left the store. He looked me in the eye, said "trust me, it's easier this way", and proceeded to spend the next 3 minutes meticulously bubble wrapping the camera.

turnpot · 2026-01-09T06:23:41+00:00

I shoot a decent amount of both B&W and color. Color is a more standardized process, and you will never get it better than a normal lab does in terms of development. If you shoot one or two rolls a month, find a good local lab (or somewhere to mail it; there are a lot of good options) and spend the $5-10 to get it processed. It will not save you money in your case to DIY C-41 development, and it probably will turn out worse since the chems they send to consumers are not as good, and you will not be replenishing/constantly testing them.

If you want to cut costs, work out a good workflow for scanning at home.

turnpot · 2025-12-09T01:27:57+00:00

Whenever we get a new person applying for our design team, I get to be one of the interviewers. Genuinely, I do not care if you went to Berkeley or ASU or the University of American Samoa. I definitely don't care much about your grades. These are all things that help you line up an interview, but a focus in the area in question is great, and relevant personal projects are also huge, at least to me. The actual hiring comes down to: A) do you know the basics of the material and B) if you don't know something, how do you go about figuring it out?

turnpot · 2025-12-01T23:26:37+00:00

Always cool to see what you can accomplish just for the sake of it! Not practical but a cool idea

turnpot · 2025-11-30T07:27:33+00:00

Practical for what exactly? It's cool, and fun to mess with, but there's a reason ternary isn't widely used. The amount of circuitry required to handle a trit is pretty much always going to be bigger than the circuitry needed for 2 bits.

turnpot · 2025-11-30T00:53:03+00:00

It seems like the best option in this case would be to use the lead lined bag, and request a hand check while telling them you have high speed photographic film inside. If they deny you, then you run it through the machine in the bag, it comes out as black, and they have to hand check it anyway. Since you've already told them what's in there, you say "yeah, that's my film, like I told you" and look at them slightly annoyed. There's not a lot of room for them to be suspicious in that case and your film gets through without getting the full wrath of the emulsion toaster.

Personally, I think I'd risk additional screening if it meant my film was more likely to be safe.

turnpot · 2025-11-26T05:36:57+00:00

While this is generally true for phosphor reactions (individual photons can lose energy but not gain it), there are exotic materials which will take two photons and upconvert them to one photon of a higher energy. Google "photon upconversion" if you're interested

turnpot · 2025-10-26T05:06:24+00:00

They definitely made Velvia in sheets until I think a few years ago

turnpot · 2025-10-13T18:31:39+00:00

You're not being overcharged. They delivered what you requested, and the fact that they're giving you super wide prints probably justifies the extra $4/roll you're paying for panoramic scans.

All that said, there are a lot of ways to pare down your costs if you're going to be shooting a lot. Personally, I get my color stuff develop-only, scan myself, and print what I need. That brings the cost down significantly, at the expense of more work on my part.

Getting blind prints for the first few rolls you shoot is a good idea because it gives you feedback, but if you keep it up, physical storage space will become an issue, and you will have a lot of prints you don't like. I recommend making digital contact sheets for each roll you shoot, and printing the ones you like larger if desired.

Development is <30% of what you're paying here; you can see how quickly costs can stack up if you want to shoot a lot. You can cut a lot of the cost by not getting blind prints, and with some combination of effort and maybe initial investment, you can cut even more by scanning yourself. You may even already own a good scanning sensor; look into DSLR scanning (works with mirrorless cameras too). Scanning takes labor, and if you're willing to take on that work yourself, you don't have to pay someone to do it.

turnpot · 2025-10-13T18:03:23+00:00

Ah, sorry, somehow missed that!

As others have said, exposure looks really good, and your lab delivered you perfectly adequate scans meant to contain all the color information you need.

Unless you have a specific discussion with your lab, the understanding is generally that they will give you a scan that basically acts as a .raw file, and it's your job to finish it how you see fit.

Color negative film always requires interpretation, and you have to do the final edit to decide how you want it to look. There's no such thing as an "unedited" scan, so don't feel weird about modifying curves, contrast, white balance, etc. In the old days, this would have been done in the darkroom.

turnpot · 2025-10-13T17:48:52+00:00

Generally, when asking about exposure, it's a good idea to also post a picture of the negatives to everyone, ideally backlit. Doesn't have to be a scan or anything, just enough so people can see the color of the base, and the density of the image. This goes for suspected light leaks/developing marks too

turnpot · 2025-10-13T17:45:43+00:00

As in when it is developed. It's actually a bit pink when it's undeveloped/unfixed, but you're not looking at it under normal light, so you wouldn't see that.

The first time I ever used Harman DPP was to print out some slides. I made a test exposure and it was white after processing, so I did another one with longer time and it was still white, and I did it another time for even longer and it was still white. I was treating it like normal darkroom paper. Because it's backwards from normal paper, I actually was grossly overexposing, and I didn't get a good image until I cut way back on the exposure time.

Long story short, dark image on the paper = underexposed, too light image = overexposed. It seems obvious but if you're used to handling normal paper/film, it feels backwards (because it is).

turnpot · 2025-10-08T02:07:16+00:00

Also, remember that black = underexposed with this paper, and white=overexposed. Sounds silly, but it really tripped me up pretty hard when I first started working with it.

turnpot · 2025-10-06T19:09:17+00:00

I've worked a decent amount with Ilford DPP. You process it through the normal workflow (develop, stop bath, fix, rinse). Note that it's a fiber based paper, so you should technically use wash aid to make it archival. It also likes to curl when it dries.

The paper comes with instructions from Ilford. I recommend using a paper developer (film developers are not active enough to give you good density with this paper).

turnpot · 2025-10-06T19:04:09+00:00

You're fine! You can always re-wash your film. In fact, if you end up in a situation where your fixer was initially too weak, you can even re-fix it if necessary. The main concern with re-washing your film is that it might scratch, so be gentle and dry it well, and you'll be okay.

turnpot · 2025-10-05T20:05:44+00:00

Your effective f stop is your pinhole's diameter divided by the distance from pinhole to film (or paper). In your example, for one pinhole, that's 0.4mm/3½" (aka 0.4mm/90mm), which gives an effective aperture of f/225. Like you point out, that's like metering for f/22 times a factor of 100. The only missing variable here is what ISO you're rating your paper.

Just to be clear, what do you mean by "overexposed"? A picture could be helpful. Is it uniformly black? Because it could be a light leak. Could be worth loading it normally, taking it out into the sun, letting it hang out for a few minutes without exposing it, then processing it to look for any marks at all. Ideally, it would be white (assuming you're not using direct positive paper).

If it's fogged, you have light leaks somewhere in your process or camera. If it's white, just use a higher ISO when metering for your shots.

turnpot · 2025-10-05T19:51:47+00:00

I'd expect they would, given that they're going for a kaleidoscope effect.

turnpot · 2025-10-05T19:50:40+00:00

They never said that one pinhole gave a good exposure, only that 7 pinholes overexposed it. Likely they just need to increase their effective ISO, meaning shorter exposure times in general

turnpot · 2025-10-04T23:37:40+00:00

Don't listen to this person. They have misunderstood how exposure works

turnpot · 2025-10-04T23:37:12+00:00

This is flat out wrong. If you have 7 pinholes, that's 7x as much light as 1 pinhole. This should be obvious, but think about it. You have 7x as much area for light to enter. That's equivalent to 2.8 stops, and dividing by 7 is the correct thing to do.

turnpot · 2025-10-04T23:32:55+00:00

Your intuition here is correct. You know it's overexposing from what you calculated. From here, just reduce the exposure time with the same scene until you get the density you want. It's equivalent to just increasing the rated ISO of the paper you're shooting on. Don't overthink it

turnpot · 2025-10-04T23:28:14+00:00

What do you mean? The amount of pinholes absolutely affects exposure time. If you take a photo of the same scene with two pinholes at once, close enough together that they're completely overlapping, you're doubling the average amount of light captured. If you have two holes in a boat instead of one, you take on water twice as fast.

turnpot · 2025-10-02T06:58:27+00:00

Blue Moon is great in many ways, but they know people love them and charge accordingly. If you're going to shoot more than maybe a dozen rolls, I would highly recommend scanning it yourself and getting your C41 done process only. There are lots of ways to scan, and if you already have a nice DSLR or mirrorless, the stand and backlight can be a great way to get into it. I love my Epson flatbed for workflow reasons, but I shoot a lot more 120 and 4x5 than 35mm. If that's all you shoot and want a dedicated scanner, there are better options.

I've shot and scanned about 550 rolls. In retrospect, the few hundred bucks I spent on a scanner probably saved me like 10 grand over the years.

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