In search of a Film Lab in Europe for alternative black and white motion picture processing

[Adiva J Koenigsberg]

I am the DP in pre-production for a feature being shot in Israel on black and white Infra Red film. I am searching for a lab that would be willing to switch out their standard D96 chemicals for a more fine grain developer. Anyone out there with recommendations of a lab? The only lab I have found willing to comply is Arri Munich, however they are only willing to use d76 and i would like to use a more fine grain developer like Xtol or something of the sort. In addition I am curious if there are any labs that are willing to use chemicals other then Kodak? Please feel free to contact me directly adiva@thenthis.org.

 

[John Holland]

I have used Arri Munich a lot over a few years but only for colour neg, a great lab . They did do all the B/W dev. for "Schindlers List " which looked good to me .!!!

[Brian Pritchard]

The problem is really a financial one. Most labs have processing machines that use perhaps 1000L of develope,r if it is quite a fast machine. They would have to dump or store the current developer and then make up the new chemicals. Incidentally D76 is very similar to D96 the normal MP developer. Whilst they are processing your film they would not be able to process anything else. In addition they would have to run tests to establish running speed to get the required gamma on the stock(s) you are using. You would have to pay for the new chemicals, and if they had to dump the original bath you would have to pay for a new bath and probably the time involved for the technicians to do the work. Actually no lab is really happy with putting a new unseasoned bath in a machine; your special developer would probably stop them processing for a week.

 

Brian

[Steve Farman]

DeJonghe in Belguim or Prestech in London both do B/W and I do negative cutting.