Take It Easy Lab

Take It Easy Lab is an independent film lab in Leeds offering developing, scanning, and printing services for amateurs, pros, and everyone in between. The lab provide mail-order developing and scanning services for colour and black and white film, as well as E6 (slide film) and ECN-2 (motion picture film). Alongside scanning film and sending digital images to customers, they can also produce high quality photo prints from their Epson dry-lab printer, and Giclée prints made using an inkjet process with pigment-based inks on archival Hahnemühle paper. Got old negatives, slides or prints you want digitising? They can even sort that too!

The idea for the lab as it is now began in January 2020, but their history goes back even further. In 2008, one of their owners, Liam, graduated from Leeds University with a degree in Photography, and started working at Snappy Snaps in Leeds. He worked there for about three years, until he found out the Leeds franchise was closing and he’d be losing his job.

During his time there Liam had forged some great friendships and started working on exciting photo projects with film photographers he’d met as customers. One of those customers was Nick Baines (aka Peanut of Leeds royalty, Kaiser Chiefs). Liam tells us; “Over the years of chatting to him in the lab, we reached the point where Snappy Snaps was closing and I randomly asked him if he was up for starting something. I mean, I needed a job, and we both needed a place to get our film developed for free… Nick was up for it!”

Together they bought the developer from Snappy Snaps and in 2011 set up their first lab, No Culture Icons Developing, along with Joe (Liam’s cousin). “We had a great six months or so, but due to a culmination of things happening at that time, had to end the service prematurely and put the film developer into storage. Although it was a sad time having to stop a project, if it hadn’t happened, Take It Easy wouldn’t exist,” says Liam.

Fast forward to 2020 when Nick told Liam that he was clearing out his storage unit and mentioned the film developer, which got the pair thinking again. Liam comments; “We had a chat, and decided, why don’t we make a proper go of that film lab we started all them years ago? This was JUST before Coronavirus came along and changed everything for everyone… Due to everything that was happening in the world, it took us months to make any proper progress on the lab, but slowly we got it all together.”

Take It Easy Lab officially opened for business in September 2020 and Liam and his team have been “blown away” by all of the support and encouragement they’ve received since. It’s this support that has meant that currently there’s a team of 11 people working at the lab, and they’ve had over 100,000 orders to date.

The lab is home to a whole host of interesting bits of equipment, from the obvious essentials, to things that lab-life a little bit easier (the team give a particular emphasis on a shoutout to their air fryer too!).

Their “trusty” Noritsu V50 film processor currently develops over 200 rolls of colour film a day, and they also have a developer which has been modified to be able to process black and white film. The team develop 99% of the black and white film they’re sent using their Noritsu QSF 430L. However, there are a handful of circumstances when they will get their sister lab, Make It Easy, to use their dip and dunk tanks to develop instead. There are certain black and white film stocks they would do this for, or if a customer asks for their black and white film to be pushed or pulled.

Once the film has been developed, their scanners are lined up ready to do their bit. The lab currently houses four top-of-the-range Noritsu HS1800 lab scanners. The Noritsu has great colour rendition, shadow/highlight detail, and can output 16 bit uncompressed tiff. The software also allows the team to produce flat scans if required, perfect for post processing. If a customer needs a single frame scanning at a higher resolution than their regular Noritsu HS-1800’s are capable of, they also have an Imacon Flextight.

As most of the equipment they use is no longer in production, the team make sure that they love and maintain it as best they can, and squirrel away spares whenever they get the chance! Their corridor of spare developers is testament to this and has come in handy when they need to swap out parts.

As well as their processing services, Take It Easy also run workshops so people can brush up on their film photography skills. Hosted by Dan Wheeler from their sister lab, Make It Easy, they vary from entry level courses, like Intro to Film Photography, to more advanced options such as Mastering Wet-plate Collodion and Darkroom Skills.

Take It Easy operate with a main aim to be an inclusive space that anyone can use. They state; “We understand that when you’re starting out, going to get your film developed might be daunting enough to put you off shooting film in the first place. We want to build a community that shares a love of film photography, no matter whether you’re a beginner or professional. We hope to bring people together to learn and share experiences through exhibitions, events and workshops.” The team continue; “We don’t take for granted how lucky we are to be the first people to set eyes on your photos, and we want Take It Easy to be both a service, and a celebration of all things film and the people who shoot it.”

The lab will soon be moving to another location in Leeds city centre. “It’s both sad and exciting at the same time,” they tell us. Currently located in Aire Street Workshops which houses over 50 creatives and independent businesses, Leeds Council recently informed the tenants that they will be selling the building. The team believe that without Aire Street Workshops, they wouldn’t have been able to grow into the business they are today. They comment; “It offers a flexible, collaborative, and affordable space for creatives to grow and has been an important cultural space for the city for the last 30 years. For us personally, it has allowed us to grow from two people in the corner of a unit, to taking over two units with 11 people on our team.”

Although sad to leave the building, and the community they’ve become part of within it, Take It Easy Lab are treating the move as an exciting opportunity to make the lab better, think about ways they can offer other services, and add different aspects to their business. The big job of gutting and fitting out the new space is just about to begin. They’ll be keeping everyone updated on their progress and lab news on their socials along the way. There’s even plans to launch their own film. Watch this space!

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