Is the Nice Film Club worth it?
Does a membership to the Nice Film Club make money sense?
Questioning whether the Nice Film Club is worth the price of admission? So was I - so I compared Nice to the Darkroom and Miller’s Professional Imaging. Here is what I found:
If you process more than 20 rolls a year, Nice Film Club is worth the price of admission. Process more than 50 rolls a year? You could save hundreds of dollars! But there are a few important caveats to keep in mind.
*Get an additional roll developed for FREE at Nice when you use Promo Code: EF6548
Become a Nice Film Club Member
Nice Film Club Compared to Miller’s and The Darkroom
*Miller’s and The Darkroom were priced using their highest resolution scanning option. I felt like this was the fairest way to compare the labs. If you want ANY of the images from a roll at a high resolution from Miller’s or The Darkroom, you have to pay to have the whole roll scanned that way. More on this below.
*Get an additional roll developed for FREE at Nice when you use Promo Code: EF6548
Become a Nice Film Club Member
Total Estimated Cost for the first 20 Rolls Developed at each Lab
Estimated Cost for 50 Rolls Developed at Each Lab
Estimated Cost for 100 Rolls Developed at Each Lab
Assumptions: 1) The Darkroom is receiving film rolls in orders of 10 - cost will be higher if you ship orders less than 10 rolls. 2) Nice is NOT returning negatives. 3) You purchase 5 .tiff files per roll from Nice at $0.33. 4) Nice $199 membership included
My Review of the Nice Film Club
Nice Film Club is a Costco-like alternative to traditional film labs. You pay an annual member fee (currently $199) to get full access to the lab’s services. And, while you can have Nice Film Club process your film without a membership for $14.99 per roll, members get their rolls developed and scanned as .jpegs for $9.99, free shipping to the lab, 10% off prints, and the option to unlock specific high resolution .tiff files for $0.99 - $0.33 each (price per .tiff decreases with each additional .tiff you select). Oh, and the first 10 rolls are free for members.
The most appealing feature of the Nice Film Club was the option to get the all .jpeg scans back at a resolution of 2000x2000 for 6x6 Medium Format, and then select which images I wanted the high resolution .tiff files for at $0.33 each. In my experience, I rarely need more than 1 or 2 images at a high resolution from each roll. This means I am wasting money every time I pay have an entire roll scanned at high resolution. Nice solves this problem!
At Nice, once you have the .jpeg scans back, you can use Nice’s online platform to select which images you want the high resolution scans for, and pay $0.99 - $0.33 per image to immediately download the high resolution 4500x4500 .tiff file. At other labs, you waste your money paying for the entire roll to be scanned at a high resolution - even if you only end up wanting one or two high resolution images from the roll.
The only downside to Nice is that they do not return your negatives by default. I can tell you that I have a closet full of negatives that I have never touched since the lab mailed them back to me. The only times I really ever need my negatives back are 1) when I have wanted to use my Sony A7RIII to Pixel Shift scan at ~200 megapixels or 2) wanted to give negatives to clients from VERY special shoots (think weddings).
You can get your negatives back from Nice, but you will have to pay a flat fee of $9.99 per order. Paying only for returned negatives on specific orders is better for the environment as it helps to reduce waste on return shipping (gas, packaging, etc). And, it just makes plain sense to me considering I rarely actually need my negatives back.
TL;DR
If you plan on developing more than 20 rolls a year, then a Nice Film Club Membership is probably worth it. Between the option to order high resolution .tiff files for specific images, the low cost per roll, and the option to have B&W and E-6 developed at the same lab, Nice comes out ahead in the numbers.
If you are developing more than 50 rolls a year, a Nice membership will save you hundreds of dollars!
