I need to vent

["Menzel, Greg" <Greg.Menzel@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

True story:

This weekend I flew down to Phoenix from Minneapolis to attend a friend's
wedding. Having good luck with my Sputnik around home for the past few
months, I decided to take it with me along with three rolls of film.

The first bad deal was I forgot my jacket in the overhead storage
compartment of the plane. In the pocket were my keys and three rolls of
film!  Gone. That, of course, was my fault. (Delta could care less - even
though I called right away with the bin/seat number, they just couldn't go
look for it. The plane hadn't left Phoenix yet either.)

I finally found a camera store in Mesa where they not only heard of slide
film, but had 120 format as well. I bought one roll of Velvia and one roll
of Provia 100.

On Saturday it was 95 and sunny, so I took out the Spud and shot six
carefully composed pictures around the area of palm trees, cacti, etc. on
the Velvia.  It turned out I did not have time to shoot the other roll of
Provia, but as it turns out, it probably was for the better.

Now for the interesting part.  When I got home Sunday I brought my film to
National Camera in Burnsville, MN. The last few weeks their E-6 machine has
been broken, so they've been sending film to Universal Color in New Hope, MN
for E-6 processing. I have had good luck with them so far. However, on
Sunday National Camera's E-6 machine was fixed, so they would do the
processing themselves. "Great!", I thought to myself. Now I can pick my film
up Monday at noon to see what kind of results I got.

At noon today I went to National Camera to pick up the processed film and
buy two rolls of the new Provia 100F film. The girl behind the counter found
the box containing my processed film, and told me there will be no charge
for the processing and for me to see a note inside the box. To my horror the
note said "Dear Customer: We are sorry to report that due to a machine
failure, your film was damaged during processing....blah blah blah..."

It looks like to me they ran the film through as print film - it has a
purplish color and everything is reverse (light is dark and dark is light)!
The packet in which the film was placed when I brought it in for processing
was clearly marked E-6, and anyone doing the processing should at least
notice the E-6 marking on the roll. I doubt this was a "machine failure",
but instead gross incompetence or carelessness on part of the processing
technician.

All I got in return was a roll of film to replace the one they ruined, and
my next processing free of charge, for "...either 4x6 or 3.5x5 size prints."
I took the roll of film and left, letting them keep their free processing
coupon, since I knew I'd never go there again.

It could have been worse (more that just one roll of film ruined), but I
just can't believe they didn't at least pay attention to what process they
should use. Morons!

So tonight I am going to go home and look at the film through the loupe, to
at least check focus and see if the composition was good. I guess none of
these will go into the folio! :(


Greg M