DM me at @ehpurrcherpriority (**link)* if you’ve any questions*

Hello there

If you’ve found your way here, then you already know that film’s gotten expensive. So, even if you somehow managed to filch a film camera off your parents, you’ve still gotta pony up for film, which is roughly $14-35 per roll of film nowadays. Assuming you get at least 36 exposures, that’s at least 40c just to press the shutter and it excludes film development and scanning costs.

This made me curious how I could maximize that cost and if there was a meaningful difference between the film labs you use to get the most out of my dollahs. These are a collection of my findings and hopefully you find them useful.

I sampled 4 film labs:

1. 2 “New kids on the block”
   1. FILEM (aka FILEM)
   2. **Grains And Such (aka GNS)**
2. 2 “Old Guards” that’s been around for awhile
   1. **Whampoa Colour Centre (aka WCC)**
   2. TripleD Lab (aka 3D)

<aside> 💡 TL;DR

1. The lab matters a lot when it comes to colours and overall output - different lab, different “interpretation” of your films.
   1. Personal Take: If you don’t intend to post process your film photos, go GNS. (Not sponsored) IMHO*,* they seem to really care about having the output usable off the get-go and it just saves me having to postproc the images myself (Film purists feel free to drop concerns at [email protected]). If it bothers you that they do some minor postprocessing, then perhaps opt for WCC where I find the image the most neutral and true.
2. “Uncompressed” files give you a little more latitude though that remains very limited in my experience- might not be worth the extra money unless you really need every bit of latitude.
   1. Personal Take: I always opt for it because I do clean up my images and the additional cost is relatively small, more of a peace of mind thing.
3. There are some misc differences that won’t matter as much (slight cropping differences, resolution differences etc) but being able to deliver the film through mail (and get it back) might be an important factor to go with certain labs. </aside>

Nerdy Methodolgy Stuff

1. Not sponsored - I paid for scans and delivery both ways out of my own pocket
2. Labs were not pre-empted that I was doing this ‘review’, I was just curious for my own research
3. Film: Unexpired C41 Kodak Ultramax 400 36 Exp
4. Camera/Lens Kit: Canon AE-1P + 50mm F1.8
5. Same roll of film scanned across 4 labs in Q3 2023, scanners reportedly used are:
   1. FILEM: Scanner Fuji Frontier SP-3000
   2. Grains and Such: Scanner Noritsu S-600 (Original developer of the film)
   3. TripleD Lab: Scanner Noritsu HS-1800
   4. Whampoa Colour Centre: Scanner Noritsu HS-1800
6. Scan size & File Format:
   1. FILEM: Pro-Grade Scan 5444 x 3649 pixels BMP
      1. no special reason for the higher resolution really, just fat fingered the option
   2. GNS: 16-Base 3024x2005px TIF
   3. 3D: 16-Base 2000x3000px. TIF
   4. WCC: 16-Base 3024x2005px. JPG

Pricing