Where to Purchase C-41 Chemistry and ship method?

[Photo Engineer]

In theory, they should be as close to the originals as humanly possible. After all, that is the way they are packed at the plant.

PE

[Mike Wilde]

As to a Canadian source, consider the present owners of Mondrian Hall/Treck Hall - Unisource.

They are a wholesaler- mostly of office supplies, but with a printing and photolab arm via acquisitions.

They will sell to end users once you give them your credit card and they establish an account in thier computer.

Then they will quote you the price of what you are interested in. I know it is a little wierd from the usual retail experience.

They carry an extensive list of kodak chems; figuring out the catalog number you want can be tricky; and cross referencing the kodak # buried in thier catatlog # is usually required.

The up side is that Unisource seem to have a bunch of local depots in various Canadian cities, and you can order and wait a day or tow and then go and pick up from thier depot.

In my expereince buying from them a few times they don't charge any up front hazmat or courier charges for pickup, although there are such fees buried in the price they qoute you. Don't expect a b&h price when you are ordering only a small amount, but once again, if you can pickup, there are no other fees apart from sales taxes.

[little-infinity]

Thanks!

Do you know where their GTA depot is? I take it they're not interested in offering chems in small quantities?

[domaz]

One option is to buy the Formulary 1L kit. Now if you want to process more rolls remember that you can re-use bleach twice as much as developer. So buy your Developer,Fixer and Final Rinse from Adorama in larger sizes. Now you can process quite a few rolls by re-using the Bleach but running the Developer and Fixer one-shot for more consistency. Not that expensive and easier to order the chemicals this way.

[neelin]

On a slightly different tack, in a pinch...

Find a minilab that uses "ECOJET" dry C41 chemistry. It's supplied in tubes of tablets. Developer, Bleach, Fixer, Stabilizer. The mini-labs buy it in 1000 roll capacity kits (24 exp). ECOJET labs are used for sure in NA & Europe. The chemistry is supplied by Tetenal.

I've gotten some "reasonable" results with it.




Still working on tweaking the mix to get rid of the ears

If anyone goes this route, I'd be happy to provide more information. I believe the ECOJET kits are less than US$350 (per 1000 roll) & I a 100 roll capacity split off of a kit would be 12/16/40/1 tablets of d/b/f/s.

[Mike Wilde]

Thanks!

Do you know where their GTA depot is? I take it they're not interested in offering chems in small quantities?

I have bought as little? as 3-10l RA-4 kits as of two weeks ago. I have not looked into c-41 small quantities. They seem more amenable to small orders than Treck their predecessor was, who had a minimum order of something like $150. To meet this limit 3 years ago I bought 20L of RA4 develper and 40L of blix. If the blix's ammonium thiosulfate sulfurs out before I get to it I can always make that up separately, and the other half - the ferric ammonium edta does not go off as far as I know.

Their shipping depot is at the north end of Hensal Street at Hensall Circle in Mississauga. It is the road under Dundas Street, where Dundas is superelevated over the railway near Cawthra just east of Cooksville.

Pickup is at door 7 or 9; there is a sign at the right door. It is a large warehouse, with a ton of transprt truck loading doors. Go in the pedestrian pickup door, up the stairs, in though a door before going to the second floor. You are on the loading floor. Look up and you will see a shippers office (a little house like structure in the middle of a huge warehouse. They take your order number, find the picking paperwork, and then lead you to your stuff, which for me was sitting beside the door I walked in, ready to go.

[hpulley]

Thanks for all this info. I'm another Canuck thinking of taking the C-41 and RA-4 plunges, especially for my 126 work as few will process it and with even fewer have scanners to make what are yucky digital prints anyways. I'm hoping I don't have to cross process the Solaris FG 200 as B&W though I would love to find some B&W 126 film still, seems like it is all gone, even ancient stuff on eBay seems to be just old Kodacolor.

[little-infinity]

No credit card here. Do they have a website I can look at? I'm more the "walk in with cash" kinda guy :P

But either way It's good that they're in Mississauga!

[Mike Wilde]

I used the phone number I had for Mondrian's old Concord depot, and it popped up as being answered in Montreal, by a very competent Unisource inside sales rep.

Mondrian-Hall
Div.of Unisource Canada Inc.
Service a la Clientele /Customer Service
Tel: 1800-387-3776
fax: 1800-387-3773


Then I filled in a credit application with their Halifax office. Then Montreal qouted me a price and confirmed the items were in stock, and I accepted the quote. They said credit application would be finalled in a day. All by email in under an hour on a wednesday afternoon, and goods were picked up that same friday morning.

Mondrian was Montreal based, so I bet that their old head offcie is now Unisource's photo and graphics supply sales location. The old Mondrian web site appears to be dead, and I can't find online with Unisource.ca where they catalog the Kodak stuff. I know there was stock in the their physical warehouse.

It is not a walk in with cash kind of place at all.

[tbeaman]

This is super useful information, Mike. I am also hoping to find sources of chemistry sometime down the road. I wonder if they have a Montreal depot as well. The local pro photolab (Photoservice) has stated that they can order anything Kodak I like, but I haven't gone in with a list of demands yet (SKU #s).