There Are Pandas, and Then There Are Pandas.
And this isn't either of them! The Pandas we're talking about here, are watches, not bears. And what got me thinking about them (again) was a link posted this morning by @cm.rook who pointed a few of us to the very attractive (and not terribly priced) Yema "Rallygraph" Panda which, in it's most traditional arrangement, looks like the one on the left, but can also be had in the version on the right: The model on the left is a true Panda, while the model on the right is called a reverse Panda. The reason for that distinction is clear--Panda bears, only come in the first arrangement. Now at this point, everyone should be thinking about the most well-know Panda, The Rolex Panda, which is actually a Daytona, and among Rolex Daytonas, the most famous of which is the Paul Newman Daytona, which was famous first, because it was Paul's, and second because it sold at auction for $17.8 million (US Dollars). The story of that auction is well-known so I'll only...
Nov 8, 2019
Second bit of advice: get Adobe Lighroom Especially if you follow my first bit of advice, but even if you don't. Lightroom is how you control and overcome the issues you noted in your post above. So long as someone else is processing your film, your at their mercy. If you're having it done at a drugstore or big-box store, there is no mercy. If you have it done by a professional lab, that portion of the equation will be more consistent and you'll have solid foundation you can build on when you scan and move your work to a computer (for post processing in Lightroom).
Consider this, if you shoot a roll of 35mm, 36 exposure film with a manual SLR, your odds (really anybody's odds) of getting an acceptable level of "keepers," let alone great shots, are very limited. And because of the time it takes to have that roll processed and printed, your opportunity to correct anything that might have gone wrong, has usually vanished (certainly the moment has). With a decent digital camera, you can take as many shots as you like, experiment all you want, and see a pretty good version of what you've accomplished, right on the back of the camera--while you're still in sight of your subject. As you can imagine, It's very inconvenient to have to fly back to Paris to improve your exposure on that otherwise great shot of the Arc de Triomphe de l'Étoile, n'es pas.?
Trust me, there's a reason George Eastman invented the Nikon D850, and it's entirely possible that reason was to make you, a really great photographer ;- )
Know whud 'ah mean, Vern?
Caveat to all of this - If I were a professional I would pretty much never use film, or only use it in repeatable and consistent environments like a studio.
Funny enough, after I got home yesterday I went to look at my stockpile of film and realized I have 11 rolls that I need to get developed. That's gonna be costly, but I can't wait to see everything I've shot over the last 6 months!