1 hour photo?

Question:What is the difference between 1 Hour Processing...
and the one where it takes a week?

Aside from the time...what is different about these two?
and which one is better?
(Not talking about price)

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker: What is the difference between 1 Hour Processing...
and the one where it takes a week?

Aside from the time...what is different about these two?
and which one is better?
(Not talking about price)

Better? That depends on the lab management and the tech doing the printing. You *might* get more experienced techs at a commercial lab, and you might not. I have over 12 years of lab experience, my senior tech has been with me over 7 years, and my part-time tech over 5. I'd say we are an experienced team. In addition, you can talk to a real person. In the commercial lab, your printer is faceless, and so are you. If they do a bad job of printing, then they don't have to face you and correct the problem. To whoever said one-hour machines can't correct during printing, abviously they are mistaken. They may have never SEEN an operator doing correction, in fact, once in a WalMart lab I was told they are "not allowed to touch the Y, M and C buttons". But in a good minilab, the operator judges the printing for color and density. In my lab, every print is examined that way and reprinted if necessary.

As far as the machines are concerned, commercial labs (the Qualex/Kodak labs and the Fuji labs) run about the same machines you see in one-hour labs. They may have a film processor for B&W, and meduim format. You won't find real B&W processing in most minilabs. The important thing about the equipment is maintenance and chemisty monitoring. Some labs do a great job and some do not.

Visit the labs in your area and observe for a few minutes. Is the lab clean and tidy? Is the tech paying attention to the screen when printing? Are they wearing gloves? Friendly at the counter? Ask the tech about the morning's control parameters. Can they discuss it, or do they seem clueless? Ask a local photographer or shutterbug who they use when they need a one-hour C41 35mm roll processed. Drop off a roll and see how the prints turn out. The one-hour labs cannot do everything a pro lab can do, but a good one is certainly able to produce good prints, it's just a matter of finding which ones are good and which ones not so much.

Another thought, your film is less likely to get lost in a local lab. The film does not leave the premesis, unlike commercial labs where many stores' film is picked up by courier each day and then sent back, Easier to have a mix-up and send to the wrong store, or just get lost during transit. The commercial labs run all the film for a large region from many different drop-off points.

Happy shooting!

for the one hour - they just run them through and how they come out is what you get and the one that takes a week they can adjust the picture lighter or darker and adjust the colors

Essentially nothing but you usually would have a more experienced person running the machine at the labs you send film away to. Often at the one hour labs you don't have anyone there that can do minor corrections. If you want to use a one hour lab experiment with the ones in your area. Some will be better than others.

1 hour is usually C-41 process which is most common. All other processes are usually sent out to a diffrent lab. Having one lab do a whole region is possible since the other processes are almost rare.

Personally I hate the C-41 process for black and white. The blacks turn out grey. Color is fine on a C-41 though as long as they do a good job. Slides are not C-41 at all but yeild the most color saturation.