C-41 B&W

Digging around in my refrigerator bin for film, I found a roll of Kodak B&W 400, a C-41 film that is processed in the same chemistry as color negative film.  I shot the roll in my Kodak Retina lla and took it along with the color roll from my Vito II to Picture Perfect.

Railrunner -- Santa Fe to Belen

Albuquerque Station

Explora -- the Albuquerque Science Museum

Tiguex Park and the NM Museum of Natural History

I used to shoot a lot of this stuff as it was cheap, nearly grainless and wide-latitude.  You can still get it on line, but the cheapest I've seen is $6.50 per roll at B&H Photo Video.  Add in shipping and processing, and you're looking at fifteen bucks for a roll of negs -- more than I'm willing to spend these days.  It does make some nice pictures, though.

Local Color

The only place I know in Albuquerque that will still locally process film is Picture Perfect at the corner of Menaul and Juan Tabó.

Picture Perfect will process any kind of film.  If you get it in early, you might get it back the same day.  They also do digital, and they will accept work by snail mail or email.  Film processing costs $7 per roll.

Here are some samples of their processing, shot with my Voigtlander Vito II on Fuji 200:

I only used Picture Perfect a few times in the past when I could still go down to my corner Walgreen's and get my color negs back in as little as twenty minutes.  Of course, that was only good for 35mm, and Picture Perfect could dunk my medium format color and get it back within a day.  I would have been happy to use them for all my color work, but they are located clear across town and there was considerable added time and expense as a result.  Now, I'm having to rethink the process since Walgreens, Walmart, Target, CVS and Costco have all gotten out of the 1-hour film business.