How we develop your colour film
Your colour films are in proper good hands thanks to this trusty workhorse, our Noritsu V30 film processor. From April 2021 we will have two, double trouble!
This processor has been in our possesion for around 10 years. This guys past job was to keep the film users of Leeds films processed at Snappy Snaps in the city centre.
Two rolls of film are placed into the machine at a time and the development process takes ten minutes from start to finish. The Noritsu V30 can process up to 30 rolls an hour, hence the name V30!
How we develop your black & white film
Black and white films are done in a much more manual way, and all in the trusted hands of John at Aire Street Darkroom.
John uses the fully traditional by hand method of developing black and whites rather than using any automated machinery. This is why our black and white developing costs a little more than colour, and takes a little longer too.
Paterson tanks and Rodinal chemistry are his choices to process your films.
How we scan your developed films
Once your films are developed, it's time for our scanners to their bit.
We have 3 top of the range lab scanners, one Fuji Sp3000 and two Noritsu HS1800's.
The Fuji SP3000 scanner was our first scanner and produces brilliant quality scans. This scanner is well known for producing top notch natural tones and is great for images that need no editing. The Fuji also gives a punchier contrast than the Noritsu.
Our Noritsu HS1800's are the newer scanners to our collection, and are seriously impressive. The Noritsu's have a slightly higher resolution than the Fuji, and produce great shadow detail. Scans are also a lot flatter on the noritsu, perfect for post edits.
For it’s speed and ease of use, we choose the Noritsu scanners for daily use, and our Fuji scanner is in the process of becoming a community scanner, where customers can hire it out by the hour to get personal work done.
If you know your onions, and have a personal preference to which scanner you'd like us to use, just drop us a line before you order and we will be able to meet your needs.
Doing our bit for the environment.
From our experience of working in film labs in the past we knew how much waste comes from film processing. We wanted to be as sustainable as we could in our lab.
Our chemical waste is removed and recovered by a professional waste company, that recover the silver content in the chemical waste, that can then be used in silver jewellery / cutlery etc!
Film waste = Money for charity
We keep all of the metal film canisters that come from processing your film, either turning them into keyrings or selling them to customers who can use them to reload cameras or make little plant holders from!
We also sell boxes of the clear plastic containers that are perfect for crafting, keeping little objects in such as buttons, ink etc.
All of the money from these products will be sent to MAP charity in Leeds at the end of the year!