Bellows Film Lab Chicago - Chicago, Illinois

Megan Grochowiak

I brought in a couple disposable cameras that I had gifted to a client for a housewarming event. The staff answered lots of questions for me over the phone because I wasn’t sure if I would be able to get them developed. They assured me it would take less than 24 hours to get my photos back! I arrived close to the end of their day Chiara & Camila the manager were so kind and helpful explaining the process for dropping the photos and getting my images emailed to me by the next day. The service was amazing and the entire storefront is so cute and definitely a fun space to visit in the city with friends. I definitely will stop back again. They were lovely to work with.❣️

Priyanka Kar

Bellows Film Lab in Chicago is my go-to spot for film scanning. They offer a great selection of film rolls and have an impressively fast turnaround for scanning. Plus, their store is incredibly charming and always smells amazing. The staff is so welcoming and friendly too! 10/10 would recommend!!

Tom Campone

It’s been a long time since I’ve had film developed but about a year ago I got back into film photography. Bellows has been great for processing. Cool store, friendly staff and great results. Film is a little expensive in general but Bellows seems to have competitive rates.

Nathan Beach

Quick turnaround, great results, great hours, staff are always helpful. Prices are a bit higher than other places but the fact that it’s quick and they’re open all day helps to make up for it. Once or twice had rolls with some dust on a couple frames but never happened again in the many rolls I’ve dropped off since so I wasn’t bothered by it (plus it’s 30 seconds to fix with google photos so who cares).

Fredric Greenblott

Two strikes and they're out. Never sending my film here ever again. I first sent a roll of 65mm/120 Vision3 50D to them about 8 months ago, and what was returned to me was completely unusable. The development was horribly botched with water marks, severe color casts, banding, and no scans were usable. I called and asked what happened and they claimed it was because I stored the film in high humidity or warm temperatures since none of the other ECN-2 films in that batch looked that way - I did neither, all of my exposed film is promptly sent off or kept in a cool, dark place until it is developed. They gave me a free develop + scan coupon as consolation.

Fast forward to 2 weeks ago. I get done with a roll of Vision3 250D in 120, and send it to them with the coupon. The scans that were returned to me were extremely warm and had severe color casts, atrocious amounts of hair and dirt, and the negatives I received were extremely bent. It seemed very little care went into packaging them. I ran the negatives into a batch of photoflo in order to clean them and scanned them myself - and even then I was only able to salvage 2 of the negatives, the others had scratches, caked-on dust or hair, and color casts that I could not fix in postprocessing. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. I won't be using their services again. For reference, the images I've attached are the only 2 negatives I was able to salvage from scanning them myself. Before editing, they were very much not usable. Even still, you can see surge marks near the sprocket holes if you look.

Charlotte Strazis

Have been coming to this place for almost a year for a reason! Staff is so friendly and kind that sometimes I think they could advertise as an emotional support film lab. Scans and development are well done. Turn around time is so nice and fast for how much film they process. I send all my friends here and they've had similar experiences. Really sweet and charming place, lucky to have them in Chicago <33

Gabriel Blanco

Love this film lab! I usually go to the Miami location, but I popped out in Chicago and they were really nice, they didn’t mind taking my 14 rolls of film from my vacation there. They even offered to ship my negatives over to the Miami location so I could pick them up back home! Very great ambiance, I personally love the way they decorated this store the best versus the other locations! Really fast turn around time… I got all my scans back from their Fuji scanner high res back within 22 hours. Bless!

Gaby Yuen-Morales

everyone at the lab is super nice and were very helpful when i had a post office mishap and had to hand deliver the film and even the person i talked to on the phone with questions was very friendly!

however, i’ve been waiting a whole week for my photos and they still have not arrived despite me choosing the 24hr development option on the little form. you should absolutely disclose to customers that you are backed up!

so many people recommend bellows to me claiming that they were “super fast” but this experience has been quite the opposite.