Updated August 3, 2026 from Somewhere in Arizona


Current State of Things

I’m currently using my grandfather’s Rolleiflex 2.8C and a Nikon F3 for my film shooting. My film is processed at a local lab, and I use a Nikon Z8 with a MC 105/2.8 lens to scan the negatives into Lightroom. I then use Negative Lab Pro to convert the negatives. I had the lab scan a few rolls for me, and I wasn’t really happy with the color film results. You can see examples of this here on the journey posts page. Since then, I’ve been scanning my own negatives. I’m still researching and prepping for developing my own film as well. I’ll have posts on this in the near future.

To Do List

  1. I’m currently testing the free Cinestill Film Convert presets, and if I find them helpful, I will post about it. (Happy with the B&W presets; still need to play with color presets)
  2. Develop my own 35mm B&W film.
  3. Develop my own 35mm color film C-41 process.
  4. Develop my own 120 B&W film.
  5. Develop my own 120 Color film.
  6. Try out the AGO film processor.
  7. Try out the Pira Darkroom Helper.

My 365Pixels Film Journey Posts

I’m trying my best to document this crazy trip back into shooting, developing, and scanning film on my 365Pixels website. I have a running log of all those film journey posts on Cliff538 here. You can also go here to see all the posts filtered out on 365Pixels.

Tools and Resources I Have Found Valuable in My Journey

Film Photography and Film Scanning


My Scans From Different Film Types

Want to see what the different film types look like? You can see my Kodak Portra scans or Ilford Vintage Tone or Kodak Tri-X.

YouTube Videos

Individual Videos that really helped me

Channels

Online Classes

Nick Carver

Software

  • CS Negative+ Convert Tools - These FREE negative conversion tools live and work in the presets panel of Adobe Camera Raw in Bridge or Photoshop and in all current versions of Lightroom – including Lr Mobile (which is FREE to use with cloud shared photos, or imported raster bitmap/JPEG/TIFF/HEIF and DNG/ProRAW files) – allowing for quick, integrated and non-destructive access to multiple color models and intuitive tools, while completely preserving native editing controls as well as all original RAW file data. This allows images to be easily shared or opened again in any Adobe CC application at any time for further editing.
  • Negative Lab Pro - NEGATIVE LAB PRO brings impossibly good color negative conversions right into your Lightroom workflow. No more messing around with tedious exports and hand-edited curves. Lab-quality tones and colors are just a click away.

Websites

General

Learning/Tools

  • A Better Light Source For Scanning Color Negative Film - Narrowband trichromatic (RGB) light sources are superior to broadband (white) light for scanning color negative film; there are very good reasons why all commercial film scanners use RGB.
  • Film 4 Ever - great resource for all things scanning and Vlads Test Targets to use for focus checking.

Film Developing

No, I’m not doing this, but it’s fun to research and explore. All through high school, I developed my own film. We were very lucky to have a full-blown darkroom and a great photography instructor.

Update(2026-07-02): Well, maybe I’m doing this… baby-stepping into some black-and-white developing first, and if that goes well, I’ll try C-41.

YouTube

Individual Videos that really helped me

Websites

  • Digitaltruth Photo - all things film developing.
  • Ilford Photo Chemistry - Ilford developing chemicals.
  • CineStill Film - Chemistry & Lab Supplies - great selection of lab supplies.
  • Pira Darkroom Helper - I ordered this. I’ll post about it once I’ve processed a few rolls. I chose Pira over AGO because of cost and how they handle temperature. The Pira maintains temperature with a built-in heater, whereas the AGO only monitors temperature and adjusts developing time, which isn’t ideal for C-41 color film processing, which needs temps to stay within a degree. There are lots of YouTube reviews on the AGO, and really, the only Pira review is on their website. They don’t seem to push their product. I emailed the owner, Daniel, and he is very responsive and active on Reddit as well. Everyone very much likes the product.

Books

  • The Darkroom Cookbook - This book has been updated for 2025 and is a great reference for all things developing. I read most of the relevant pages before I tried developing my first roll.

  • Twentieth-Century Color Photographs: Identification and Care by Sylvie Pénichon - I recently stumbled upon this book, and it is a wonderful deep dive into the history and care of color photographs. The appendix includes a chronology of several film types, including Kodachrome and Ektachrome films, Polaroid-Kodak-Fuji instant films, and more. Just a great resource.

Hardware