Film Question

[newbsterv2]

Hi all. I have a question regarding 35mm print film. Since I am new to photography and would like to save money on developing a whole roll of film not exactly knowing how good the prints may be I was wondering if an exposed piece of film can be taken right out of the roll and scanned using a film scanner connected to a pc. I noticed that the people at ritz camera dangle the unrolled film in open daylight before they process it. My question is this. Is the film safe to expose to daylight once it has been "exposed" by the camera? Thanks for any help I appreciate it!

[another view]

Film is exposed to light when you expose it, but just for a very short time as you're probably familiar with (shutter speeds, aperture). If it's exposed to daylight again before processing, it'll be ruined. Once the film has been processed (which creates negatives) then it's safe for exposing to daylight because all the light sensitive stuff has been "set" while processing.

Same thing with scanning, and scanners have light sources. Scanners need negatives, and film that's not developed won't do anything. It's not transparent and like I said, there's no negative until the film is developed.

Labs should be careful with negatives, but this isn't always the case. Usually pro and specialty labs will be more careful and consistent, but they'll charge more too. Pro's whose income and reputation is on the line usually use labs like this. Hope this answers your question.

[Asylum Steve]

I noticed that the people at ritz camera dangle the unrolled film in open daylight before they process it...

It's possible you saw them pulling out the "leader" of the roll of film before putting it in the processor. That's a fairly long strip of blank film at the start of every roll. This section of film goes black because of this exposure to room light, but it is eventually discarded...

Steve's explanation is it in a nutshell...

[Skyman]

If you have a negative scanner then you can save a bit of money buy getting the negatives developed but not printed, scaning the negatives and deciding off the scan which ones you would like to print. however most labs will charge you the higher reprint price if you hand them an already developed negative. you have to decide how many images you are likely to want prints of from each negative and then do the math based on the prices at your prefered developer.