Qualex/Kodalux (was Re: Realist developing...)

[P3D Brian Reynolds <reynolds@xxxxxxxxx>]

[Paul asked some questions with regard to Qualex/Kodalux]

At one point Kodalux was the Kodak mail order processing lab, and
handled slide (especially Kodachrome) work for many (most?) one hour
labs.  Kodak decided to get out of this business (possibly in responce
to anti-trust worries) and allowed majority ownership to wind up with
others.  This transfer of power created Qualex (perhaps this already
existed as the drop off lab arm of Kodalux).  In recent years the
reputation of Qualex had gotten so bad that Kodak decided that in
order to maintain their good name (Qualex was a Kodak approved vendor,
don't remember what the trademark name for that relationship is) Kodak
would buy back controlling interest (I don't think they own it all) of
Qualex, thus recreating Kodalux.  So far as I know Qualex and Kodalux
are two sides of one company.

My experience has been that almost all the one hour photo shops in NYC
used Qualex/Kodalux.  The way to tell was to see how long it took to
process the film.  If it wasn't same day, or a couple of hours, they
were shipping it out to Qualex.  I found that it was cheaper to cut
out the middle man and buy Kodalux mailers from Adorama or B&H when I
bought my film.  I used to send my film (astrophotos that needed hand
cutting and mounting) to the Fair Lawn, NJ lab (another advantage of
sending it out myself, I got to pick the lab that got my film).  The
Fair Lawn and Dallas labs had the best reputation at the time. I had
gotten all sorts of warnings that I should not let Kodalux mount my
astrophotos, but in reality they did a better job than I could, so
long as I told them to hand mount the slides (which made the turn
around time a week).  I haven't shot 35mm slides in a while (a couple
of years), so I do not know if the quality of the Kodalux labs has
slipped.  I do know that the mailers now have an expiration date.

I sometimes wish Kodalux had mailers for 4x5 film.  I'm not terribly
impressed with the "professional" labs I've been using for processing.

-- 
Brian Reynolds                  | "Humans explore the Universe with five
reynolds@xxxxxxxxx              |   senses and call the adventure science."
http://www.panix.com/~reynolds/ | - Edwin P. Hubble


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