If you cut a roll of film to put in your pinhole camera, can you take it to a regular photo developer place?

This is for my science projects. Also.....what is the difference between color and black and white pictures?

If you cut a roll of film to put in your pinhole camera, can you take it to a regular photo developer place?
The answer will probably be no as these outfits process films en mass - so providing a non standard format will probably throw a spanner in the works.





You have 2 entirely different processes here - colour neg is run through C41 - the process tends to be fully automated, hence very unfriendly to cut negs.





You ought to be able to tray process B/W without much difficulty at home though - the equipment and materials tend to be less hard to handle / process critical than C41.





I'd stick to b/w as the process control for C41, including timing, temperature and the condition of your components (i.e. how your chemistry is stored) is very critical - oxidisation is one key issue that could undermine your process control and it'll be expensive to re-mix chemicals every time - it's really geared to rigorous machine processing techniques.
Reply:If you can find a custom lab, they may process the film for you, but usually pinhole camera shooters develop their own film.





I think you know the answer of your second question. The film and processing are completely different from each other, but for the available formats (35mm, 120 and sheet film) which are the same
Reply:Developing the film is not the problem, you have it developed like any other film, but roll film is pre-exposed by the manufacturer with frame numbers and film type, the things you see down the edge of film. They will still be there on your pictures.





Roll film may be too fast and difficult to control with a pinhole camera, what you need is lith film, usually available in sheets and is like printing paper but the emulsion is on a transparent backing rather than paper. This develops like any other B%26amp;W film, but is much slower with an ISO of 5 or 6. Another advantage is Lith film is 'blind' to red light so you can see the image appear when developing.





Colour film has a B%26amp;W layer just like B%26amp;W film, but in processing this just acts as a mask for the colour dye layers underneath, 1 Red, 1 Green and 1 Blue. These are developed by a totally different process to B%26amp;W film, a C41 process for colour negatives and an E6 process for colour slide film which has an extra layer to make the final image a positive rather than a negative.





Developing B%26amp;W film is a fairly easy 2 bath system, developer and fixer, you can put a stop bath in between which instantly stops development (hence it's name) and helps stop contamination of the fixer bath with developer.





Why not give it a go? There is lots of darkroom equipment for sale for a song at the moment, safe lights, developing tanks, developing trays and such, and the chemicals used, at least for B%26amp;W, are reasonably priced (if a little 'niffy'). May be your school or college already has them.





Chris