I mentioned recently that my local film processing lab has gone out of business and that I’ve had to find somewhere else to carry out my C41 and E6 development. I’ve had a couple of rolls of C41 developed last week by my local camera store (they do E6 as well, but this is sub-contracted to another lab with a slightly lengthy turnaround, so I sent my roll of Velvia to another place fot quicker results).

The camera shop cut and sleeve 35mm in film into strips of four frames, as opposed to the strips of six that the old lab provided (and to which I cut my home-developed B&W negatives) so I opted to receive the developed film uncut and sleeve it myself at home. The roll of 35mm they developed was tucked into a 35mm film canister, as was the roll of 120 film, the main difference being that the width of the 120 roll meant the cannister was uncapped with the film poking out the end. I think this was the cause of the significant amount of dust on the 120 negatives when I scanned them. While imperceptible to my naked eye, once imported into Lightroom there was an entire galaxy of small white spots apparent on the resulting scans!

So this afternoon has been spent painstakingly cloning out the spots in Photoshop. I’d estimate it took a good 20-25 minutes to deal with each of the ten frames that are worth processing further. I really hope that the 35mm roll is not similarly afflicted!

Here’s a photograph that feels apt in the circumstances.

Canon Sure Shot Z135 & Ilford HP5+. Ilfotec DD-X 1+4 9mins @ 20°

Taken on 3 September 2022