Peak Imaging
While pondering the purchase of a decent Paterson dev tank, light-proof bag and all of the other good stuff to allow me to dev my own TX400 and Neopan 1600 I figured I’d check on the costs of mail order dev. Vlad pointed me at Peak Imaging who I’d always assumed would be out of my price range.
Peak cater to professional photographers and do B&W, C41, slide and probably all sorts of crazy types of film I don’t even know about. From what Vlad has told me, Peak do some seriously impressive (and expensive) prints. Much to my surprise Peak don’t charge serious cash for dev only.
Having heard only good things, I found an envelope, stuck in a roll of TX400, Neopan 1600 and some Fuji Superia 200 (or 400), along with my debit card details. Sending is done via freepost, but they make a charge of £2.50 for return postage.
As I only put the package in the post box on Wednesday, I hadn’t planned to come home this evening to find my negatives on the door mat. Very good turnaround, especially compared to Jessops, which requires a trip into town to drop them off, and a trip about two weeks later to collect (they have to send them away and they end up coming back eight days later, just too late for a weekend collection).
The sleeves Peak provide are better too, they cut into strips of six (exactly how many frames the film scanner I’m borrowing from Quentin handles) and there is no curling on any of the three different types of films. Usually I get some gungy marks on my negatives with Jessops, this just isn’t true with Peak.
So… for £13.54 for three rolls of film, including despatch and a turnaround of three days. I won’t be using Jessops again.
Tags: Photography