Going back to film means going back to development. I’ve long since got rid of my old development kit, so I need to use labs.
I tried the lomo lab in Austria. Some of the Lomography lenses are brilliant, and some more are glorious fun. I’m not, though, going back to their lab. They offer development and scans, which is good. However, scans should be TIFs and large, to make any post processing practical. TIFs allow decent colour and contrast manipulation, and a good size permits creative cropping. That lab returned tiny JPGs. They also returned the negatives, luckily, but not properly. They shipped a single unprotected reel of processed film in a box: uncut, unprotected. By the time I got them in my scanner, they were damaged.
I also tried Mein Film Lab. in Germany, and they did a proper job. The scans were TIFs, although I’m not using that film here because I screwed up the photography. The negatives were returned properly prepared. They allowed me to select precisely what I wanted back. They weren’t cheap, but they were good.
My scanner still works, although not in the usual way, so I will continue to scan my own 35mm and smaller films. I will certainly consider Mein Film Lab for future medium format work, except …
… despite the insinuations of a sales guy in the photo shop in the centre of Luxembourg city, there are other such shops in the city which offers services for film photographers. They’re outside either centre proper. One such is Fototrade, opposite the BiL HQ, not so far from Hollerich station. I’ll test their service with my next couple of films.
POSTSCRIPT: Mein Film Lab. haven’t worked out for me. They’re expensive, and, worse, some negatives have come back scratched. I’ve settled on the slow but cheapish service from Fototrade, for now.