Souped, Contaminated, or Intentionally Altered Film

We are committed to helping photographers shoot, develop, and recover more film. However, intentionally “souped” film creates a serious risk to lab equipment, chemistry, and other customers’ film.

Souping film turns film photography into a chemical experiment. We are a film lab, not a science lab, and we are strongly opposed to sending souped film to a commercial or small independent lab for processing.

We do not accept souped film

We have a zero-tolerance policy for intentionally souped film.

If you choose to soak, contaminate, chemically alter, or intentionally damage your film with substances such as food, alcohol, soap, oil, household chemicals, bodily fluids, paint, ink, salt water, or other foreign materials, you should develop that film yourself.

Do not send intentionally souped film to our lab.

Running contaminated film through a processor can damage equipment, ruin chemistry, contaminate future customer orders, and cause significant downtime. A single roll of contaminated film can create hundreds or even thousands of dollars in lost time, replacement chemistry, cleaning, and interrupted production.

Damaged film is different from souped film

We understand that accidents happen. Accidentally damaged film is not the same as intentionally souped film.

If your film was accidentally exposed to water, ink, chemicals, dirt, mold, liquid, or another contaminant, please contact us before sending it. Tell us exactly what happened, what the film was exposed to, and whether the film is wet, dry, sticky, oily, moldy, or otherwise damaged.

When we know what happened, we may be able to handle the film through our Rescue Lab using special precautions. In some cases, we may develop damaged film using chemistry that is already past its normal safe production limit so there is no risk to other customers’ film or our primary chemistry.

This approach may produce color shifts, contrast changes, or unusual results, but damaged film already carries those risks.

Please tell us before sending damaged film

The right way to handle damaged film is to contact us first and be honest about the problem.

For example, if ink was spilled on film and the customer tells us before sending it, we can decide whether there is a safe way to attempt development without risking our equipment or anyone else’s order. That is exactly the type of communication we need.

The wrong way is to send contaminated film without telling us and let us discover the problem after it reaches the lab.

Water-damaged expired film

Water damage is relatively common with old found film, especially expired film stored in basements, garages, attics, sheds, or old cameras. If you ordered the expired film option and the film shows signs of normal age-related or storage-related water damage, we will usually treat that as part of the rescue-lab challenge.

However, unusual contamination, unknown liquids, oily residue, sticky substances, chemicals, or anything outside normal expired-film deterioration must be disclosed before we process the film.

Customer responsibility for contamination damage

We reserve the right to refuse, pause, return, dispose of, or specially handle any film that appears contaminated or unsafe to process.

We also reserve the right to bill the customer for unexpected damage, chemistry replacement, equipment cleaning, downtime, or other costs caused by contaminated film, especially if the condition of the film was not disclosed before processing.

Please do not surprise us with contaminated film. If something happened to the film, tell us first so we can decide the safest way to proceed.