A day in the life: Photo developer
By JENNIFER WILSON
News editor
Everyone likes pictures. We mail them to family and friends; we stick them in frames and display them all over the house.
But how do they come into existence? How do they leave that tiny cannister that fits inside your camera and become shiny prints?
Ray Holler can tell you. He develops pictures every day at Photo Express.
There are two places in town where you can get your pictures developed: Alco and Photo Express. Alco sends away the film for developing, but Express does it right on the spot.
So how do you develop a roll of film?
Simply put, it's a process involving chemicals, two huge machines, and an eye for photos.
When Holler's store first gets a roll of film, he has the customer fill out an envelope and drop the film inside. Then they tell him what size of prints they want and how many of each picture.
Then the real work starts.
Most film Holler gets is regular 35 millimeter film in canisters. But if it's a disposable film, first you've got to tear off the paper cover of the camera and pry apart the plastic to remove the film and the battery.
Holler saves both batteries and plastic covers. He sells the broken camera casings to the camera company for about 40 cents a piece.
Now it's time for film.
First you take the small metal canister of film to the first contraption, which looks a little bit like a small metal tongue with two levers on either side. You slide that small metal piece inside the slit of the canister, pull the lever with just the right touch — and if all goes well, the metal piece will have grabbed the film inside and pulled out a "tail" about half an inch long.
Next, you take that tiny end of film and, after you've put it into another contraption, line it up with a clear plastic "leader card." The leader card is about six inches wide, with two rows for two canisters of film.
Now tape the end of the leader card to the tip of the film and insert the plastic card into your first huge machine: the film processor. It takes raw, undeveloped film and turns it into what most people would see as a long strip of uncut negatives.
Inside the processor, the film snakes its way through different chemicals.
While the processing takes place, Holler readies the other big machine: the developer, which prints the final product. This customer has asked for four-by-six prints, so Holler takes a massive canister of four-inch wide paper encased in black plastic and inserts that into the machine.
Holler has to change that canister whenever anybody asks for a different size of picture. For three-by-fives, he uses five-inch-wide paper on a roll. The machine cuts it every three inches. For four-by-sixes, the machine cuts the roll every six inches.
After about 15 minutes in the processor, it's time to develop the film. It's been spewed out of the processor still attached to the leader card, and now it's un-taped from that card.
Holler takes the end of the developed film and feeds it into a tiny slot on the developer. The film feeds into the machine, where each frame is scanned, just like a computer scanner. When it's done, the machine spits the film back out, still in one long strip.
After entering the proper measurements and number of pictures (doubles or singles) into the machine, Holler now sees the actual pictures pop up onto a tiny computer screen, four at a time. He moves the cursor from picture to picture, adjusting the brightness, darkness, or color of a picture as needed. Then he hits a button — and that sends four pictures to the printer.
It takes six minutes to print out a roll, Holler says, and when they come out of the machine they're piping hot. That's because after going through a series of chemicals used to develop the picture, they're "dried" with hot air that reaches 55 degrees Celsius. That's 131 degrees Farenheit.
Finally, Holler counts the pictures to make sure they're all there, totals up the price, and puts them in an alphabetized tray. But not before he cuts the negatives in plastic "sleeves" and puts them in the envelope.
They're now ready for the customer. When things are clicking, it takes about 30 minutes to finish one roll, from start to finish.
That's just the tip of the iceberg for a photo developer. It doesn't include the constant measuring of chemicals and maintaining of machines. And it doesn't detail some of the trickier parts of the job — those parts that are done in pitch-black darkness.
For example: When Holler first tries to pull that half-inch "tail" out of the film canister in the very first step, sometimes the machine just won't grab it.
So how does Holler get the film out? If he cracked open the canister in the light, he'd ruin the film. Instead, he has to put the canister inside a "black box" and open the canister, roll up the unexposed film, and put it in another canister that snaps shut.
That's all without looking.
He faces a similar process when putting the huge rolls of undeveloped paper into canisters. This paper, when put into the developing machine, eventually turns into prints.
But if it's exposed to the light before that, the whole roll can be ruined. So Holler opens the package of paper, opens the canister, inserts the paper, and feeds it through the appropriate slots — all in the complete dark of his office's bathroom.
Holler says that he's seen quite a few birthday parties and vacations in his few years as a photo developer.
His job offers him a good way to meet the community, he says.
