Where to develop your film in Toronto

my strategy, last updated May 10

You’ve rewound your film, now what?

DO NOT open the back of the camera until you’re sure it’s rewound!! The other toy we’ve received recently is a Canonet rangefinder. I didn’t know exactly how the rewind mechanism worked, so what I thought was a successful rewind was definitely not done correctly at first…There was a moment of terror as I saw the film stretched across the back of the camera when I was expecting it to be neatly tucked back in the canister.

No worries though, quickly closing the back, I was able to only ruin 2 frames (and one other with a “artistic” light leak)

Phew!

The joys of the big city

Luckily, Toronto has a bustling analog photography scene, and there’s lots of people dropping off their film for development. There’s a few more places I’m considering trying out, stay tuned for those also.

Downtown Camera

Web: https://downtowncamera.com/

Sign up for their AMFM club. SERIOUSLY, I get no kickbacks or referral fees, but it pays for itself essentailly immediately, I’m not even sure how they manage to provide such a good deal. It costs $30 per year ($25 if you’re a student or part of a photo club). You get a free roll of film (just not slide film), and yes, I was that guy asking for the most expensive one you can get for ‘free’ — it’s Portra 800 btw ($33.50, more than the cost of membership!). You get 5% off the development services and 25% Kodak and their inhouse rolled film.

How much does DTC charge for film development? $8.50 for C-41 or b/w. The turnaround time for “non-rush” is quoted at 7 days, but I got mine back in 4 with JPEG scans. Not bad. ($8 for ~2000*3000px jpegs — they use a Nortisu scanner). You get a stamp card (think like from a coffee shop) After 10 stamps you get a free develop +/- print/scan (there’s a separate stamp bit for each/both depending on what you get). Doing the math it’s $85 for 11 rolls developed which is $7.72 per roll (then take another 30 odd cents off for the 5% AMFM discount)

Aden Camera

Web: https://www.adencamera.com/

ONE HOUR service. YES that’s right. You might remember in the early 2000s dropping off film at Costco for one hour service, sadly that’s not really widely available these days. The minilab for C-41 that Aden uses gets you the negatives back in 1 HOUR, I couldn’t believe it! It’s $7 for a roll so cheaper and faster than DTC (even with the AMFM discount)

As of the May 10th writing of this article, you are entered into a raffle for a 35mm film camera (Contax G1 as of today). The expected value of course is tiny, but a cool gimmick.

Home scanning — DSLR? Flatbed? Film scanner?

I went down the rabbit hole of DSLR scanning, film holders, lights, copy stands etc. It is all quite expensive, but a perfectly timed Kijiji search bailed me out.

I was fortunate and got a great deal on a old Nikon film scanner. Specifically the Nikon Coolscan IV-ED (USB). I can feed in (technically 6 frames — but the lab cuts into 4s for free) the film and have it batch scan. It takes 10 minutes for 4 pictures, but only have to intervene for each batch, and it gives me 2900DPI 12 bit TIFFs (works out to be about 5000x3000 uncropped). This isn’t the best home film scanner, but the breakeven on the scanner is about 15 rolls (using JPEG prices) and the files are very usable. The fancier 4000DPI and 120 film capable ones are close to $1k…yikes. Boot up the old but functional Windows XP era software, and we’re off!

Screenshot from NikonScan 4 Manual

The other way to digitize at home is with a digital camera. Something quite interesting about the concept of taking a digital camera to take a picture of a piece of film, but we do live in this hybrid era. DSLR scanning requires inversion software (Negative Lab Pro seemingly the best) which itself costs $99US, so I will stick with the built-in early 2000s NikonScan software for now.

Summary - May 10

For now, my strategy is Aden for C41 1hour service where I self scan, DTC for prints maybe? B/W at Aden isn’t 1hour turn around, so I’ll probably stick with DTC.