This film was made in 1994 and shows how photographic film (35mm) and prints were processed by wholesale photo finishers.  This particular laboratory was processing around 56,000 films per night that’s approximately 1.6 million prints.

The film was originally made as an information guide for new members of staff at our external shops.

With the onset of digital cameras and eventually mobile phones the large wholesale photo finishes started to close down, along with the equipment suppliers like Gretag and Agfa Photo.

Photo finishing is now largely done on a much smaller scale using Kiosks and Minilabs and most recently Dry Minilabs.

I will leave this as a final thought…  What will happen to photographic archives in 100 years time?  How will the image from your computer, mobile phone or CD be viewed?

Remember the floppy Disk or video tape?  How do you view these now?

Still the best way to keep memories or archives is the photographic print (these have been around since 1827)