Tempe Camera Photo Imaging Center

First off, found them quite rude. I had called earlier in the day and discussed film developing and pricing, I told that to the woman working the front desk and she goes ‘you called aaaaaanndddd…’ in a rude tone. I literally quietly chuckled because it was crazy how rude her tone was.
I develop my 120 film at a pro lab in Utah and California normally, as I am a full time film and wedding photographer. I didn’t have time to ship the film out and needed the scans right away, so I had to use one locally.
In terms of scanning quality, not great. Inconsistent from frame to frame, which shouldn’t happen that staggeringly considering most of the 5 rolls were shot with the exact same settings. The sharpening setting was on the scanner is up completely too high. Way too sharp and very unflattering.
The color in the scans is way off. Sometimes way too yellow, sometimes way too cyan.
I tried to fix the photos in Lightroom, mostly using exposure, temperature and split toning to counteract their tones.
Overall in image quality, very poor.
Price — $ 188 for 5 rolls of film done in one day. Timeliness was not a factor, but I paid twice the normal price to make that happen.
Other big issue is the way they deliver the files. They only offer them on a disc. If you have an Apple Mac from the past four or so years, you know that they don’t have a disc drive. The lady working suggested I buy a disc reader for my computer. Crazy. So I had to go to an office supply store, buy a USB and bring it back to them. Waited for them to develop and scan and then went back to pick up.
Huge waste of time considering that every other pro lab delivers via Dropbox, WeTransfer or FTP.
I am writing this review because I want them to make it. I want this lab to survive because film is a beautiful and wonderful medium and I have made a living off of it for years.
So I would love to see:
1) Nicer customer service. That was an incredibly rude transaction and weirdly she was a lot nicer when I came to pick up the film. Must have picked up on my shocked facial expression.
2) Better scanning. I heard they use Frontier, great. Noristu and Frontier are what my normal lab offers. But why was I not asked for a profile? Light/​dark, warm/​cold, sharpness level, etc. All other pro labs offer a custom profile. If they do do this, that wasn’t explained.
3) A different delivery method. She made the comment that it would be so expensive to do something like Dropbox. I would argue that it’ll cost you more not to in the long run because even if the scans were perfect, I would never drop off and pick up a USB/​disc every time. Big inconvenience.
I know multiple all film wedding photographers in the city who spend $ 10,000−30,000 a year on developing and scanning with out of town labs. Take that business back! Why aren’t they developing here? The above issues are 100% why.
Overall, please make these changes and then let us know when you have, we want you to make it!

A little difficult to find, but it’s right next to Tempe Camera and right across the street from Oregano’s. Like the other reviewer, I was looking for somewhere to get photos processed from my Holga (cheap, toy, novelty) camera. I just learned from her review that this may be the last place in the valley that can process this film — which makes sense considering I took it to a Walgreen’s once and they looked at me like I had just sprouted horns.
They are highly knowledgeable here. I know practically nothing about cameras (I received my Holga as a gift 5 years ago and only used it once), so I was so glad when there was a guy behind the counter who not only knew what a Holga was, but knew how to get the film out without risking exposure. He was so nice and told me that due to some new equipment they were installing, it would take 4 days to get my prints back. This was fine with me as I was in no rush. 4 days later I got a call and came right in! They gave me back my negatives as well as some beautiful square prints. It all totaled around $ 14. Not bad for discovering what was on a 5-​year-​old roll of film!
I would recommend this place for any film development needs! I am so glad this place exists because they are truly practicing a lost art!

I really try not to give people gifts that I actually want for myself, it’s just that my taste in all things is so damn good, I can’t help but feel they too will lust after the same things I do. Which is why my husband ended up with a white Holga last Christmas. If you’re unfamiliar, it’s a toy film camera from China with a cult following among photo nerds due to its completely unpredictable results. The good news is he loved it and it’s lots of fun to play with. The bad news is you have to 1. Actually go to a store to buy film (medium format, we usually go with 120); and 2. Actually pay money to process that film
Woo hoo for TCR Photo Imaging, which is conveniently located (at least to me in the East Valley), has reasonable hours and awesome staff. We’ve taken about 15 rolls of 120 film to them for processing since December (always for a disk, we haven’t done prints with them) and not a complaint to speak of. It costs about $ 4 to process the film and .60 cents per image (they don’t charge you for ones that don’t come out) to transfer to a disk. I have nothing to compare those prices to, but they seem pretty reasonable to me.
Also, we recently took the Holga in because we couldn’t get a loaded film to wind after taking about four photos. Not wanting to break it by forcing the wind or open the back and expose our film, we took it to TCR. They opened it safely, pulled the film out (saving our four photos from exposure) and explained that it’s a common problem with a piece of foam separating from the inside and getting caught up in the works. They even offered tips on how to keep it from happening again. That’s the kind of knowledge you want from your local photo shop.
The last time we went in, they informed us they were backed up (though catching up) due to the fact that THE ONLY OTHER FILM PROCESSING STORE IN AZ THAT DOES MEDIUM FORMAT CLOSED. Wow, this is the very last place to get your quirky little films developed, how sad. To find the silver lining, I feel lucky that they are close and that they totally rock!