James lane – alchemy, epilepsy & james bond

Recently I’ve been talking with friends about developing, my mistakes, and how to improve after recently going back to development.  It’s been interesting to improve my results, so being more careful in preparation has been good.  After speaking with James Lane about developing we became friends and started talking to different developers etc.  Now although James is young, he has a scientific persona and can hear how enthusiast he is for alchemy!  He loved it so much he started developing for customers and runs his own lab!

James talks to us about why he’s different from other labs and spends time talking to us about making your own chemicals. He’s got some top-secret plans he’s working on and has an interesting future ahead of him.  I love his passion for pushing film, controlling contrast and grain.

What’s interesting about James lab (zone imaging lab) is you can choose the developer!  He even has explanations on his website what each one does.  I think this is a great unique selling point and makes him stand out.

In this one:

– spending 3 hours with a reel

– light leaks

– custom pushing technique

– increasing negative density

– epilepsy

– career choices

– trying new developers

– pyro 510

– beta testing XTOL killer

Random questions

having a pint with James Bond and James chooses a strange superpower.

Links:

We discuss a few of the characters from facebook forums including  Rüdiger Hartung and Daniel Keating

Lab website – https://www.zoneimaginglab.co.uk/about

Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/james.nguyen.7

Friends of the show

Recently I’ve shared some of the work brought to us by Static Age.  It’s great to see Pete at Static Age is bringing more photographers zines to us.  The most recent is called “cooking with gas” by Brandon Lasko.  It’s available now and only £7.

https://www.staticage.co.uk/product-page/cooking-with-gas-by-brando-lasko

Other friends are:

Do check them out – https://filmdev.co.uk/

Chroma Camera –  https://chroma.camera/

Thanks

Big thank you to David Collyer for introducing me to James.