Hi, I’ve just been perving up your blog. I love your work. I’d love to get more involved with working with film but have been avoiding it because I can’t really afford it. I did have one question though which was about your sprocket rocket photos. Do you have to develop them yourself? If not, and you get them done at a lab, do you have to request for the sprockets to be left in the prints or….? I’m a bit confused by the whole thing. Keep up the good work! It’s all awesome. x Lauren

Hello! Thanks for perving. I like to encourage perving!

The sprocket rocket is a mysterious creature. My work flow is that I shoot film, usually Kodak Portra 400 (roughly $6.00 a roll) or Ilford 3200 (roughly $7.60 a roll), and then get each roll processed for $6.00. I have the lab only develop the negatives and not do any prints or scans because of the fact that most labs cant scan over the sprocket holes. Then once I get the negatives back I manually scan them all with a Epson v600 using Lomography’s Digital Liza to hold the negatives. So all in all its not the most inexpensive process; but I love it so it makes it worth it.

However, there are ways to cut costs. Most Rite Aid or Walgreens sell cheap film. So you can get that film for cheap and then have them process it. However their machines, not being maintained as well, will be more inconsistant and prone to scratches. This route will cut your cost to about a third of what I do. 

I hope that helps, let me know if you have any more questions. 

Derek