Bellows

Wanted to make a review of Bellows Film Lab Chicago since many of the existing reviews on Google and Reddit are old. For context, I’ve done probably 5-6 transactions with BFL over the past couple months, and they’ve developed and scanned like 10-12 rolls for me.

I wanted to like Bellows despite the negative reviews because I wanted to support a local lab and wanted the fast turnaround times they advertise. What I learned is:

• The fast turnaround times are never available. Every time I’ve dropped off film they tell me that they are backed up and I can only choose the the 72-hour option. (They advertise a 24-hour and sub-24-hour option.)

• The scans still rarely come on time. The last two times I’ve had to email them the 4th day asking when they will send me the link, and most recently they told me that there was a leak in the lab that put them behind schedule. I’ve heard them give other customers similar excuses in the past.

• One time I dropped off four rolls and they only scanned three. Luckily I noticed some photos were missing, otherwise I doubt that it would have been caught. (They did have the negatives for the 4th roll, they just apparently forgot to scan them.)

• Many (all?) of the scans they’ve sent are missing part of the image. I double checked the negatives to make sure.

I’m sad to move on, but I feel like the lab is just stretched too thin or something. I think I’m going to start sending my rolls to The Darkroom.

Where do I start...This was my second time giving Bellows a shot. I dropped off a roll of hand-rolled 500T (ECN2) that I asked to be pushed one stop. Typically I develop at home but was feeling lazy and we were in Chicago for the weekend.

The scans were delivered a bit late, due to some "internet issues", whatever. No biggie. Except the note with the Dropbox link was that the frames were super underexposed. Sure enough, it looked like the shots were barely exposed and were not very recoverable.

I know, I know..blame the lab for your mistakes...except I shot rolls immediately before and after, including the same hand-rolled 500T, all of them on Auto on the Olympus OM-2SP...but only the one developed at Bellows was "underexposed"...odd.

Then I got the negatives back (They were shipped 16 days after the scans were delivered) - I think the leader speaks for itself. If there was any doubt, here's the rebate compared to home-dev in ECN2.

On one hand, mistakes happen. On the other hand, not owning them is unacceptable.

Oh, and they delivered 27 images scanned...there's 30 exposures on the negatives they returned. Yeah. Just don't use Bellows.

EDIT: Oh yeah, the quality image they delivered was garbage. I'll scan the negatives myself later and post a comparison, but I'm not understanding how the scans were that underexposed...I've recovered much worse from negatives.

EDIT 2: The owner contacted me via email, and after providing some details, in my eyes he's made things right with me and apologized for the error on their part. Please do not review bomb them if you haven't personally had an experience with them.