Processing:

If you start to color your pictures with light or filters on your camera’s lens there are two ways to preserve your efforts. First you could shoot your special efforts on chrome film. This will not only preserve the special color and/or tone effects you’ve done, but it makes an excellent reference if you decide to make prints later. If you shoot these scenes on negative film you will need to take your film to a pro shop for processing and explain to them what you’ve done and that you want your work preserved. In fact it would be best to discuss this matter with your potential processing service before you’re ready to bring in the film. You’ll make their life a lot easier if you shoot each scene twice, identical except that one should include a standard gray card. When you use a gray card in a scene it is important to have its surface parallel to the film in your camera. This doesn’t have to be precise, but the card should not be at a noticeable angle to the camera. Don’t take rolls with special color or tone work to a regular processing service. There won’t be any particular harm to the negatives; that is beyond the normal risks, but the prints will likely come back with most, if not all, of your special effects removed. Processing services have highly automated machines that are set up to provide the general public with the results they think the public expects. This includes particular opinions of what the color in a picture should look like. Since your special scenes won’t conform to those opinions the machine will do its best to remove what you’ve done.

Once in a while I want to get my results faster than taking my film to a processing service. To do this I shoot chrome film (slides) and process it myself. It’s not to hard to do, and you don’t need a dark room. No, I don’t have a darkroom; I use a dark bag to put the film in a daylight-processing tank. From there I work in the laundryroom with the lights on. I can process two rolls at a time and it only takes a few minutes to do the processing. There are lots of books available to help you get started with this if you would like to try it.