Slide processing times

[Anonymous]

I've been mailing slides to Kodak for 15 years. I could mail Monday and have slides back Friday or Saturday. That gradually increased to 10 days at most. Lately (last 18 months or so) it's taken a minimum of 10 days to 22 days to get slides back. If I mail 4 rolls at a time, they trickle back over a 5-8 day span. People I've talked to say Fuji takes nearly as long. Any ideas why? Have other people noticed similar time lags? Thanks

Frank

[Anonymous]

Kodak has closed out many plants that used to process slides and prints over the past 10-15 years. The plant that I used to send all of my slides to (Findlay, Ohio) no longer processes slides, it may even be closed. Kodak now has one or two plants that handle all of the slide work for entire country, and prompt service has went the way of the PA. At one time, I could expect to get my slides back in 3-5 days, now it takes an average of 2 weeks. I believe that Fuji does all of their processing for the entire country in Arizona, that would explain their lack of timely service. It seems odd to me that with Fuji marketing an impressive array of new slide films in the past 5 years, they would have such lousy customer service

[Anonymous]

i would use a pro lab in your area... i hope your shooting Ektachrome or and E-6 equiv.They can turn your slides in an hr or so, but you might spend a dollar or so more. Kodak has abondon us with the whole digital crap!

[dknelson]

The problem goes beyond delay. I have now received several sets of slides where the printed or embossed number on the slide has no relationship to the order in which I took them (I take careful notes). So for example a sequence of three slides showing a train in the distance, closely approaching, and then going away might be numbered 7, 3, and 10. When I complained to the guy at the camera store he agreed that this is becoming more common and that Kodak now seems to view the numbers not as a sequence but merely as a way of keeping track of how many slides are involved.
They are forcing us to go digital and the irony is that I fail to see how that benefits Kodak very much
Dave Nelson

[Anonymous]

You have a valid point, I think that Kodak has let their loyal customers down with all of the emphasis on digital. I can see them getting involved in it, but take care of your loyal Kodachrome users too. Out of frustration, I have began to use Fuji films the past few years, they use E6 processing and I can get them processed by an excellent pro lab in my area. It still uses honest to goodness cardboard mounts and gets the number sequencing right. I am amazed that Fuji has come as far as they have in the past 5 years with the quality and variety of transparency films that they offer. Great!

[Anonymous]

Frank, I can sure relate to your irritation. I normally take my film to the local Rite-Aid drug store for developing. (It's a small town here, and that is about the only place, without sending it in the mail). Prints, I usually get back in about 3 days. Slides, on the other hand, will take up to 3 weeks! You don't even want to know how long it took to get a roll of B&W prints back!
All I can assume, is that the slide format is going the same route that the B&W has. Not much demand for it these days, so the labs wait until they have enough on hand to make it economical to process. I guess that if we want perfection, we should all set up darkrooms in the basement. But I, along with many others, have neither the time, money, nor space for such a luxury.
I have thought about getting a digital camera, but I would rather stick to my old trusty 35mm.
Of course, in another 10-15 years, 35mm film will probably be as hard to find as 126 film is now.
Yea, I got a nice old Kodak, if I could only find some film to put in it...... And when was the last time you saw flashcubes on the shelf?
Ah, yes, progress... "Damned if we do, damned if we don't....
Todd C.

[Anonymous]

NO WAY.. film will be around forever....
im a photographer, alot have ventured out into the digital realm, but there comming back to the good old film.
i do use digital, but only when its used for web work, and small publication work.

i will stop using film when they pry my dead fingers off my trusty F4

[RudyRockvilleMD]

I have a similar problem. I have been using Kodak slide film, either Kodachrome or Ektachrome, for a little over 50 years, and I have mostly had them processed by Kodak. Kodak has a processing lab near me in Gaithersburg, MD, and I could drop off my Kodachrome film on one afternoon, and pick up the slides the next afternoon.

A little over a year ago the Kodak lab in Gaithersburg stopped processing Kodachrome, and they sent it to their lab in Fairlawn, NJ which added 3 - 4 days to the turn around time if I was lucky a week or a little more if I was unlucky.

Effective December 31 the Gaithersburg lab will no longer allow customers to drop off their films for processing at the lab instead they can drop them off at certain dealers in the area who will send them to the Gaithersburg lab, however, those dealers won't accept slides in prepaid processing mailers. If I want to use the prepaid processing mailers I will have to mail them to the nearest processing lab myself thus increasing the turn around time and the chance of loss.

I don't know why the Kodak Gaithersburg lab will no longer allow customers to dirctly drop off their film for processing nor do I understand why they discontinued processing Kodachrome film. I also do not understand why the turnaround time for processing slides is increasing.

[nfmisso]

First Rudy; Kodak does not want to process slides anymore.

I have given up on slides, and gone to C41, the local Wal-mart will process a roll and cut into strips of 5 images for $1 in 1 hour or less. I then run it through my HP slide/film scanner, which provides me with a positive image 2000 x 3000 pixels = 6M Pixels.

Nigel

[Anonymous]

Is there anyway to project this image onto a screen, for a room full of people?

[Anonymous]

I have seen these "digital projectors" they work just like the trusty old slide projectors, but they are WAY expensive! I saw one in a mail order catalog, I think it was a "factory-serviced" one at that, and it was about $2000.00. There might be cheaper ones out there, I don't know. After seeing the price for THAT one, I stopped looking.
Todd C.

[Anonymous]

Thanks Todd, I guess I"ll just stick to the trusty old slides. One of the neatest things about them is that you can project them easily onto a screen for an audience. $2,000 bucks is way more than I need to spend to get something that I allready can do with slides. Another thing that I like about slides is their permanence. Slides that I took 20 years ago are just as bright and clear as they were when I took them. I'm not so sure I would trust a digital file to last that long. Any comments on this from anyone?

[Anonymous]

Hi folks,
Thanks for the info. Couple comments.
1) I mailed 1 roll Kodak 10/28 got back 11/9.
Mailed 3 rolls Fuji 11/4 and 1 11/6, got 1 back 11/14, 2 11/15, 1 11/16, so for the moment Fuji appears better.
I guess I'm out of date, but I like the factory quality and around here, the local shops want upwards of $10 a roll for slides, I can buy mailers in bulk for around $4 each. Plus I'm 40 feet from mailbox, about 5 miles from film drop off.
I know digital is way of future. What kept slides going is the magazine industry, and as soon as they go digital, E6 film will be about as hard to buy and as expensive, or even more expensive than b&w slide film.
I think the digital projectors will come down in price, maybe never as cheap as the Kodak carousels.
Never used one, but having seen them in action, I think they might be better than carousels since they are basicly a bulb in a box with some cable connections, don't think there is a single moving part, maybe not even a fan.
While slides may be good for 40-50 years, I have more faith in them than digital. I don't know how long CDROM lasts, but I am worried about once collection is on CD Rom about being able to acess it in 50 years. Remember 8 track? SonyBeta? Now I hear Columbia House has stopped selling music cassettes and that Walmart expects to quit selling VHS by 2005 or so at latest. Sure DVD looks "permanent" but whats next?

Frank

[oltmannd]

I would think a digital image file burned onto a CDROM would last nearly forever. The problem is that to get the same image quality as a slide in digital format would require a BIG file (even compressed).

The dyes in Kodachrome are supposed to hold up very well over time since they are not part of the film emulsion, but are added at the time of developing. I've seen 50 year old slides that still have great color. But, the dyes in Ektachrome et.al probably won't hold up all that well over that amount of time.

[Anonymous]

Thanks Donald for the reply. I do have some slides in my collection that were taken in the early 50s (on Kodachrome) that still do look great. But the older E-6 process slides have lost some of their pop and the dyes have began to shift. I scanned the E-6 slides and burned them onto a CD so at least I will have something. When I started taking photos in the early 70s I bagan with KR 64 and KM 25, and I am now glad that I did. They look as good as when I took them with very little color loss. I do store them in a cool room in Logan metal slide files. Does anyone know how well the new E6 films hold up that Fuji is manufacturing now? I really enjoy using them, but since I plan on being around for quite a few more years, I would like to think that I will be able to enjoy them, without damage, for many more years. Has there been any information published on their longevity?

[Anonymous]

Charlie,
I would strongly suggest you look at a couple of articles that appeared in TRAINS during 1999;
the July issue(pages 74-75),and the September issue(pages 86-87).Those articles addressed slide longevity,and how to properly store them.
Kodachrome forever.

[Anonymous]

THANKS, I'LL LOOK THEM UP.

[edblysard]

Hey Dave, Kodak's benefit is that for years now, they havent been a film company, but a plastic processor. The profit in film wasnt so much the processing of slides, but the sales of the base plastic film and chemicals needs to the processors world wide. They make the base tape for videos, recording tape, from the "pro" size 3/4" down to the stuff in a cassette tape. They also make the discs for CDs. They market them under their own name, but the also make wal-marts, kmarts, a lot of the off name brands. They bet the farm on digital, and the best way to ensure the world goes digital is to slowly close down the film market. Fuji is in the same boat. Look at your computer. Ten years ago a home computer was the size of a large suitcase. 8 years ago it got down to the size of a typewriter, 6 years ago laptops were the size of a dictionary, 2 years ago the size of a magazine. Last year, the size of a wallet, next year? Remember the beta vs VHS player debate. Yes beta was the better machine, picture and sound as good as digital.. but VHS was cheaper to make, cheaper to buy and a lot cheaper to make the cassette for. Its market driven. Kodak make more money making storename discs than they do selling the discs under their own name. Yes, they are driving their old film market away, because they have a new huge and more profitable market in place. Heres an odd one, it was costing kodak more to make the plastic film can than the film in the can, so they out shopped the cans to a ROC plastic company.