What does the Golden Era of film mean?
In Irohas Photo, we take pride in providing you with a glimpse into our lab setup. To us, the Golden Era of film signifies leveraging not only the good but the best-in-class, gold standard 21st-century photo lab equipment. We aim to redefine the expectations of what it means to be a film lab in 2023, approaching the midpoint of the 21st century.
This gold standard, best-in-class setup is almost synonymous with a single brand, a Japanese photo equipment brand: Noritsu.
According to Wikipedia, Noritsu Koki Co., Ltd is still a robust company with a thousand employees as of 2020. Since 2010, the company has actively engaged in M&A activities in other industries and has transformed its business by entering the healthcare sector. In 2016, the company sold its founding photography-related business. However, during its heyday, Noritsu dominated the market with its QSS (Quick Service System), an automatic photo development system known as a "minilab," installed in photo studios and DPE stores. It held a 50% share of the global market.
Almost 20 years have passed, but well-built machines last a lifetime. In Irohas Photo, our goal is to build a business that offers products and services that can endure a lifetime. Therefore, it's only fitting that we utilize a full Noritsu setup in our lab.
Equipped with four automatic pull-through film processors (two C41 QSF-V30 and one E6 R410), along with a custom Black and White V30 machine, we also have four LS-600 (35mm) film scanners, one S-2S (120) high-res film scanner, and three Imacon (off-the-chart super high-res film scanners). We are delighted to introduce one of the first "Same-day" film processing and scanning labs, especially for E6, after 20 years.
For more details on our machines, you can visit the link above or the thumbnail link below. We invite you to step into the Golden Era of film alongside us at Irohas Photo. With that, we are excited to announce the startup of our lab on November 16, 2023!
For all of our offering see our Developing and Scanning page