Love Gelatin Labs! The pictures turned out beautifully. They were quick to turn it around, even during the busier holiday season, and drop off was a breeze. I was concerned that most of my low light photos would come out underexposed, but they turned out brilliantly! So happy with the results. Thanks Gelatin Labs :)
I have no doubt this lab does exceptional work based on their hundreds of doting reviews but I get the feeling they may have grown and too big for their britches and taken on too large a work load.
I took a chance on them with 5 rolls of film. Their website noted their turnaround time could be up to 20 days at the time of my order. For faster turnaround they encourage you to choose Fast Pass however the style of scans I was looking for were not available fast pass. I specifically wanted my scans with black borders per client request (part of why I chose Gelatin) and Fringe scans were not eligible for fast pass scanning. I'm now going on 30 days and have yet to receive my scans. Communication started strong with them addressing issues with mailing label, and has completely fallen off since last week when they noted my scans should be done by Friday. It's now a week later and several unanswered emails and no scans.
I hope that they are able to grow their team, scale their production, get back on track timing wise while continuing to do the incredible work prior clients talk about but I don't think I can ever send my film confidently to them again considering this lack of communication and time frame.
Hi there, thanks for taking the time to share this. I’m really sorry to hear about your experience, and I want to make sure we fully understand what happened so we can make it right.
You’re correct that our Flexible turnaround side has seen delays recently. We’ve been implementing a lot of improvements to get those orders moving more consistently, but clearly we fell short here, especially on communication, which shouldn’t be happening.
To look into this properly, we’ll need a bit more information about your order. If you can reach out directly to our management team at edilson@gelatinlabs.com, we can dig into the status, understand where the breakdown occurred, and resolve this with you as quickly as possible.
We appreciate you giving us a chance, and we’d really like the opportunity to fix this. We look forward to delivering the quality results you have heard so much about, and that we strive to constantly deliver.
I placed the order, sent in the film and have heard nothing after it has been delivered. I reached out multiple times with no response. Really bad service, send your film here if you want to lose memories.
Sorry if we missed the mark here. We will be reaching out directly to rectify this situation and make it right, including getting eyes on your order, and your scans/negatives delivered safely to you. We do not answer emails on weekends (business hours Monday-Friday) and can take up to 48 hours to respond to status check-ins.
Best,
Ben
Amber Hurley2025.11.14
Gelatin was the first place I sent my first roll of film... and I never looked back. The care they take with each roll is reflected in your prints & scans. And if you're worried about turnaround time well.. you can't rush art. Better quality, takes a bit longer and it's worth it <3 I highly recommend Gelatin Labs to friends, family, and YOU!
Gelatin Labs is my go to film lab. I've never been disappointed in the quality of my scans and they make the whole process super easy with many different options.
I’ve used Gelatin labs for the past several months and gotten around 15-20 rolls developed by them. They always provide phenomenal work. Sometimes if you don’t get a fast pass it does take a while, but that just means that other people love them too. They are very responsive when you email them and very helpful when you make mistakes (like rolling out all your film 🫣) THANKS GELATIN TEAM!!
Great experience and service. I will say, it did take me about about a month to get my scans back, but I personally chose the "flexible" timeline and it looks like the lab exploded in business basically overnight so I can't fault them for that! My understanding is that they're adding staff and have removed the "flexible" timeline option to speed things up. Timeline wasn't personally a big issue for me, but it's something you might want to be aware of. I'm 100% positive it will get evened out soon enough, and they were very communicative almost every step of the way. One small nit-pickey area of improvement I'd give is that I got notification that the lab received the film several days after USPS said it was delivered. Considering that USPS sometimes delivers based on vibes alone, a quicker notification that the film was at least received in-store would ease some anxiety I think.
I'm new to film, and did not feel at all judged or mocked when two of my rolls came out completely blank - in fact they gave me store credit even though I'm the dadgum dingus. The roll that DID come out had great quality scans, and I'm excited to see the prints.
Price-wise, I'd recommend choosing a cheaper lab if you're say, film-testing a camera and aren't sure if any of your pictures will come out well, got high and went wild taking pictures of the ceiling, or you gave your old point and shoot to your six year old nephew or something like that, but if you have a few rolls that you're confident are absolute bangers, go for it, they're honestly great.
I’ve been developing photos from my half frame cameras for years through various developing companies and this is by far the worst. First of all, they’re so busy it takes forever to even get your film scanned, I sent out another roll to another company at the exact same time and I got my scans and prints delivered faster than I even got a confirmation that my film made it to this lab. Then when I did get my prints, they’re not accurate to my photos. As you can see, the first photo is the scan and the second is the print. The person in the photo is completely cut off in the print even tho they were in the scanned photo. The quality of the photos also is not up to par with other developing companies. If you do send your film in, I’d suggest just getting scans if you don’t mind waiting at least a month and then printing them elsewhere. I’d recommend supporting smaller mail in companies I’ve had great experiences with such as Reformed Film Lab, Film Developing Co, and Bellows Film Lab.
Hi Vanessa, I’m really sorry for the experience you had.
We’re a small, family-run lab and we’ve been working through a wave of orders that stretched our turnaround the past two months. That’s on us to set clearer expectations, and we’re actively improving that across the board. We’ve also been sending newsletter updates to keep our community in the loop.
On the print crop you mentioned: when “full-bleed” prints are selected, a slight crop can occur to fill the paper edge-to-edge. With certain formats—especially half-frame—this can be more noticeable. If you want to retain 100% of the image area, our “white border” option avoids that crop.
If you’re open to it, please email me directly at ben@gelatinlabs.com so I can make this right for you. I appreciate the feedback, it helps us improve our service.
— Ben, Co-Founder, Gelatin Labs
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