Last Good Film Lab — Local services in Los Angeles

I have tried to give these folks the benefit of the doubt but I have been thoroughly disappointed too often. Unlike other film labs, this establishment routinely provides the slowest turnaround time in the area for developing and scanning. That can be fine, if they properly set expectations, but I will often get promised scans e-mailed to me at a certain date and not receive anything for 1, 2 days later. I won't even receive a reason for why my scans were delivered late.

This week was the last straw. I dropped off a few rolls of film last Monday. I was told they would be available likely this Monday. I received nothing. Tuesday, I got nothing. I checked in again in the afternoon and they had a technical error and would need one more day. That's fine. Wednesday rolls around and I don't hear anything until I call at 6:30 pm. They tell me my scans will be sent at the end of day, 7:30 PM. 7:30 pm comes around, and I get nothing. Now it is 10:30 pm and I still haven't received anything. I tried calling back a few times and no one picks up because they close at 7:30 pm!

Not only am I disappointed but this also affects my clients expectations on me when I can't give them an accurate timeline for their photos, damaging my own business and reputation.

One last comment as well: I once received a medium format roll with multiple light leaks. When I called to ask what had happened, they said there might be something wrong with my camera! Given that I had just repaired my camera at considerable time and cost I was very concerned. I had to shoot another test roll and get the roll developed at another lab for me to realize there was nothing wrong with my camera. I haven't had any issues since with my camera.

I really wanted to support this shop but their unprofessionalism and lack of care for the customer causes too much risk for me to recommend their services for anyone.

Update: I appreciate the feedback from the Lab and their promise to work on turnaround time. I have tried them one more time and turnaround seemed to improve. I am still wary of trusting them with time-sensitive work but respect their ownership of the problem and...

I'm not usually compelled to review but I work for a professional photographer and would be fired if anything like this happened. This was a laughably bad handling of an already unprofessional situation. A friend of mine had four rolls of film from our road trip developed yesterday and got a call saying two of them were completely ruined. Apparently someone's "hand slipped"... that was the only explanation we got. With film, you literally have one job, and that's to not let light leaks occur or whatever "hand slip" happened here. This mistake shouldn't have happened in the first place, but the handling of it was even worse- this place doesn't care about customer retention whatsoever. Over the phone, we were told he'd get a refund for the rolls ruined, not even a refund on the whole order. He had to physically go into the store to say that he wanted a full refund, and when he asked for free film, he was told that it was out of stock- no offer for a credit until we asked or anything to remedy the situation. At every step of the way, this place had the opportunity to prove, at the very least, that they took this seriously - instead, he had to come up with all the possible solutions for them to make up for this. Needless to say, I'll never be getting...

I really wanted to like this lab for their mail in and Frontier service, but unfortunately my customer experience left a lot to be desired.

First, they don’t confirm when your film rolls arrive. As someone who uses film for weddings, it’s important to know when my work is safely received. I felt left in the dark until I followed up multiple times.

Communication also felt difficult. I emailed over a week ago with no reply, called for three days with no answer, and finally got through to someone on Friday who asked for my name and then told me my film would arrive soon. Only today did I find out, through another follow-up email and phone call, that my scans had already been delivered five days ago but that the notification went to my spam but the person on the phone did not mention this. When I did finally get my scans today, four rolls were missing. They had been sent to the wrong email address, so I had to reach out again to get those files re-sent.

All in all, for the amount of money that film processing costs, I do hope for more streamlined and reliable communication from a lab. I am used to waiting for film to arrive but the lack of communication, responsiveness, and organization made this experience more stressful than it...