Hi,

I don't shoot B&W that often, about 1 roll per week and I'm lazy to develop myself. I found that B&H is selling cheap Kodak mailers for Black and White and they claim they're able to handle any B&W film. I heard they also use Kodal Professional Paper, better than the paper my local minilab uses, but don't their quality control or developer recipe.

Anyone has experience with them? should I use particular films? I remember sending in an Ilford and result was not good, but that's long time ago. maybe I should stick to Kodak's own product. Now I use APX100 the most.

I know XP2, or 400CN are for lazy people, but I can't take the weird color anymore, and I don't re-print them on black and white papers or enlarge them frequently in the minilab. Just shoot B&W for record of life, not professional purposes.

Thanks for any comments.. Fred

-- Fred Ouyang (yo54@columbia.edu), June 22, 2001

Answers

As long as you don't mind no white and no black on the images-just all middle grays, the mailers should be fine. Seriously, I have never had a machine print of a B&W neg I was happy with. Highlights are either totally washed out or dingy grey looking, and shadow areas are usually printed completely void of detail. The negatives are usually not developed with any great care or consistancy either. I still prefer a slight off color of the C41 B&W stuff over machine prints of regualr B&W emulsions.

-- Andrew Schank (aschank@flash.net), June 22, 2001.

I tried this mailer once with Fuji Neopan 400. Wasn't that great, the paper was also not very special. A better solution might be A&I prepaid processing mailer for 35mm print film (C41) ($11.95) with Kodak 400 CN. They only accept this b&w-film and it's $5 extra, but the results are quite nice. The quality differs though, last time they did a very good job.

-- Dietmar Moeller (moeller@phys.columbia.edu), June 22, 2001.

Fred:

I have used these mailers and was very disappointed with the quality of the processing and the prints. I now use San Miguel Photo Lab (1-800-493-2727) for all my B&W work. They charge only $7.00 per roll for processing and a contact sheet. I enlarge or print only the best ones from the roll. They take great care when handling the negatives. You can be sure your negatives will be returned unscratched!...............

-- Muhammad Chishty (applemac97@aol.com), June 26, 2001.