Obvously the end-quality depends on the film itself and
your skills as a photographer.  C41 processing is
ubiquitious and takes no particular skill.

OTOH, there are a number of ways that film can be
screwed up in processing by carelessness, mis-handling,
old chemistry, etc. etc.

So it's mostly a matter of finding a lab that takes the
proper care.  I wish there were a more definitive
answer -- but that's been my experience over many
years.  Once you find a good lab, stick with it.

One more idea/suggestion: ask for "processing only" --
ie., no prints.  In my experience, a good deal of the
mis-handling wasn't in the processing per se, but in
the mis-handling during the printing stage.

rafe b
www.terrapinphoto.com

I think that one of the reasons that digital P&S destroyed film P&S shooting
so rapidly was because of how unspeakably lousy most commercial
photofinishing was and still is. In camera jpeg processing is far superior
to the corner walmart/drug store minilab. It shouldn't be, but it is.
I had no clue what was locked in my color negatives until I got my first
film scanner, the original HP photosmart, now many years ago.

You will not be able to just feed a roll of negatives into a scanner and
have the prints come out.

Film scanners are separate from printers.  A film scanner creates a digital
image file, just as one would get from a standard digital camera.  You would
typically burn those image files to a CD, and then taken them home and edit
them in PhotoShop, Paint Shop Pro, or some other editing program, to adjust
things like brightness, contrast, color saturation, color balance,
sharpness, etc.  Once you've tweaked the file to be the way you want it, you
would print the images.  You could print them on a home inkjet, or take them
to a camera shop that does on-site printing of digital files, or you could
upload them to an online printer and they would mail the prints back to you.

Once you scan the film into digital image files, you have choices.  The
first step is to scan the film, and you need to know something about
technique.  Scanners can be set to a wide range of resolutions, and you
would want high-resolution scans for best results.  Also, the scanner will
give superior results if it has ICE3, as opposed to scanners that don't,
because it can correct scratches and dust spots in just a couple of minutes,
whereas it might take you hours to manually get every one if you had to do
the job yourself.

At this point, you should try to get someone to teach you how to use the
scanner that is available to you, and to create digital files.  Since you
have no prior experience with scanning, don't expect to be up to speed at
the very outset.  There is a learning curve involved.

The benefit is that once you learn how to extract the maximum information
from your film images, and then to use editing software to tweak them just
right, you will be able to produce prints that rival those of custom labs,
and you can get them done at cheap prices.  After all, you were the one that
did most of the work.

I recommend that you look at www.scantips.com to get a feel for some of the
factors involved.  Then try to produce good scans of your negs.  Only then
should you work on learning to edit them.