A small but dedicated lab, our purpose is to offer tailored services to each individual client to fulfil their particular creative vision. As quality, reliability and close communication with the artist forms the foundation of our company, we treat every roll and print as if it were our own.

Every black and white film is individually hand processed to give full control over how the images turn out. All colour film is processed in our very own top of the range colour chemicals we make ourselves. We strive to make your negatives and prints the way you wanted them and ensure our customised service remains affordable at all times.

Zone Imaging Lab was founded and is run by James Lane, a photographer and darkroom printer for over 5 years. He has also a background in chemical engineering and experiments in making new developers and/or modifying existing ones as a hobby. He creates the lab’s very own colour developing chemicals that was the child from many months of research and testing.

Film Processing

When it comes to processing film, we stand out from the rest. We go beyond the other labs.

For our unique black and white services, every roll is individually hand developed in a range of developers that you can choose - please see the developers page for details on our developers. By offering this service, we can adapt to giving a personalised look for your negatives - there is a certain style you want your photos to look, we can provide it. If no preference of developer is stated, we will default to Kodak Xtol stock replenished.

For colour negative film, thanks to our technician’s advanced photo-chemistry skills and research, we process it in our very own lab-made developer, bleach and fixer that has received high acclaim to give not only give high-quality lab-grade results but has been commented on multiple times as being as good as Kodak Flexicolor. Unlike other labs, we use developer once then discard to give maximum quality - we prefer quality results over savings on some raw material costs.

We do not charge extra for pushing or pulling.

All BnW film is fixed with Ilford’s Rapid Fixer, given an archival wash and then in distilled water with Ilfotol; C41 film is washed in Kodak’s final rinse to ensure maximum archivality.

Cutting and sleeving are included in the price. Proof sheets are done in the darkroom on 8x10 inch Ilford RC glossy paper.

Turn-around time is expected to be 3-4 working days plus shipping.

We can currently only develop 35mm and 120 film.

Film Digitisation

We offer digitisation of film as part of our services. We employ a custom made reproduction rig leading to incredibly high quality results comparable to a drum scanner. We use the very best negative carriers available to ensure maximum flatness and hence sharpness across the frame. We can digitise 35mm, 120 and 4x5 sheets.

Metadata of your shots e.g. camera model, lens used, film stock, ISO rating, date shot and developer used will be provided in the scans to help with your film scan organisation. This feature is also quite unique to us. This is not available for the RAW scan option.

Scans are sent via WeTransfer in either JPEG or TIFF files. We recommend TIFF files for further editing by the customer.

JPEGS are exported in the sRGB colour space, TIFFs are exported in Adobe RGB but can be exported in the ProPhoto RGB colour space upon request.