Nice Film Club Review - One Year In
I’ve been using the Nice Film Club as my exclusive lab for the past year. In a previous post, I broke down the costs of the Nice Film Club compared to Miller’s and the Darkroom, and found that the Nice Film Club was going to save me thousands of dollars. With about a year of film developed by NICE under by belt, I feel like I can give a pretty good review of the Nice Film Club’s lab.
Things I like:
Nice’s Online Delivery Portal
Rolls are searchable and sorted by film type. You can even add custom tags for faster searching.
· The Price! $9.99 per roll plus free shipping is hard to beat.
· The online order system is great. No more loosing emails from the lab or expired WeTransfer links. All of my scans are in one place, and I can go back and re-download as needed.
· The option to download high-res TIFFs after I have viewed all of the photos in JPEG is a game-changer. I only need to pay for high resolution scans of the photos I want – not the whole roll. No other lab I know of offers this.
· C-41, Black and White, and E-6 (for $14.99) are all developed in the same place.
· Fast turnaround. Even with their regular service, I usually get scans uploaded within 2-3 days of delivery to the lab.
· Free shipping. NICE covers USPS shipping to the lab.
· Customer service is great. Whenever I have had a question, they get have gotten back to me via email within the business day.
· Film Store. As of 12/10/2023 NICE has 35mm Portra 400 priced at $15.99 for members. 120 Portra 400 is $13.99. They do charge $9.99 per order for shipping, however when I emailed them they were willing to combine shipping with the negatives they were returning.
Things I didn’t like:
· White Balance is always off. Like, really off. For the price I’m paying for each roll ($9.99), I can’t complain too much. But it is marginally annoying to have to go into Lightroom and color correct every scan I get back from the lab. In my experience, The Darkroom and The Find Lab have delivered the best scans. But, other labs with better color correction are more than double what I pay at NICE.
Nice Film Club Scan as Delivered
Uncorrected scan as derived by Nice. Kodak Proimage 100
Corrected Scan
This is the same .jpeg image after I white balanced manually in Lightroom.
· The only other minor annoyance is getting negatives back. Even when I select return shipping, I’m never quite sure when my negatives will ship back to me. Sometimes I get them weeks after the lab was done processing the film. But really, this is not a huge deal because I’ve already received the scans, and can download the high-res .TIFFs if needed.
Will I Renew My Membership?
Overall, I have come to really like the service Nice Film Club provides. I strongly recommend Nice Film Club if you develop more than 20 rolls per year. Correcting white balance isn’t a big deal to me, and has probably helped train my eye to be even more aware of color when I am shooting. Probably can’t call that a feature, but taking a couple minutes to color correct isn’t a huge deal to me.
