Caleb J.
Yelp
I really wanted to like this lab; everything around the process is a great experience. Great service from staff who are excited to 'talk shop,' fast turnaround, and low prices. It's also convenient that you can drop off and pick up at Glass Key in SF. I understand why they have such a good reputation.
Unfortunately, the quality of processing leaves a lot to be desired. My first roll I dropped off with them had some sort of artifacts from the sprocket holes on the image. In most of them it gets lost in the details, but in a couple it kind of ruins what were going to be good shots. In the example here (telephone pole), I have increased the contrast a bit to highlight the issue.
When I asked about it, they said it looks like there was a brief, dim light leak in the dark room, and the film cast a shadow on itself. They said they'd comp a roll for me, so I was willing to accept that this was a fluke and decided to give them a second chance.
However, with my second roll there are horizontal scan lines across pretty much the entire strip. I know this happened in scanning because I made a scan of my own using a digital camera. Obviously my scan leaves a lot to be desired, but it does show that the lines aren't on the negative (Airplane photo: lab scan on left, my scan on right).
On top of this my negatives were returned to me uncut even though I asked for them cut and sleeved. Since this was a comped roll maybe they didn't want to include cutting for free since that isn't where they messed up before; that would have been super reasonable, but I wish they'd have said that when I dropped the roll off. I picked this roll up at Glass Key so I wasn't at the lab, so I just took it as is.
Overall, quality is not emphasized here, but pretty much everything else is. If I was shooting professionally, I'd be extremely upset about the results. As it is, I'm just a little sad this place didn't work out for me because otherwise, it had all the marks of a great lab.
