Trust me, Taipei has far too many shops that still do film developing actively. Film is definitely not dead in Taiwan. I have spoken to local film store owners, some friends from Taiwan, etc. Finally managed to compile a few shops that are frequented by the local film shooters.
1. Sky rainbow 天虹沖印相片網
Get ready, the price from this lab will make your jaw drops. Developing & scanning of one roll of colour negative film costs only 60 NTD! That’s about SGD2.80!! The only condition is they won’t cut your films for you. Well, you can always cut it yourself and they do provide film sheets for free.
Don’t worry about the quality, because I sent in 3 rolls and they all came out good. The female boss was very friendly. However, they cannot give you the developed film in an hour. I got mine on the second day. So, if you are not based in Taipei, plan your schedule well.
I strongly recommend Sky Rainbow, 天虹!
Address: 台北市中正區汀州路二段244號
No. 244, Section 2, Ting Zhou Road, Zhong Zheng District, Taipei
Nearest MRT Station: 台電大樓站，Taipower Building Station
2. 林屋照相器材有限公司
This is the second shop I had visited. The male staff was quite unfriendly. Nonetheless, their scan is also not bad. Pricing at 100NTD (Less than SGD5) and you can get your film after one hour. Most importantly, this shop is more convenient as it is located centrally along Taipei Camera Street (Bo Ai 博愛路) and also near to Xi Men Ding shopping street.
They also do ECN-2 processing for 120NTD per roll.
Address: 台北市中正區博愛路60號
No. 60, Bo’ai Road, Zhongzheng District, Taipei City, Taiwan
Nearest MRT Station: 台北車站，Taipei Station
3. 玖華攝影器材有限公司
Another lab that is located along the camera street is the 玖華 (Jiu Hua). The price is 110NTD and I got my developed film after about 5 hours. I guess they do high resolution scan because the file size of each of my scanned photo is about 6-7MB. That’s a very big file size! Anyway, not much difference. If you are in a rush, just go to 林屋 even though the staff attitude was not as good.
Address: 台北市中正區博愛路2號
No. 2, Bo’ai Road, Zhongzheng District, Taipei City, Taiwan
Nearest MRT Station: 台北車站，Taipei Station
The following labs are the one that the locals would also go but I had no time and films for them to develop:
正典攝影沖印社
They can develop and scan your film in one hour. The lab opens daily 10am to 10pm so you can actually drop your film in the evening, go feed yourself at the Shi Lin Night Market and go back after 1 hour to collect your films. Perfect plan!
Address: 台北市士林區文林路267號
No. 267, Wenlin Road, Shilin District, Taiwan
Nearest MRT Station: 士林站, Shi Lin Station
SNAPPP
SNAPPP Taipei
I love this shop for its variety of hard-to-find films. They have a lot of expired and out-of-market films that you have never heard of. Best of all, they have 2 very thick booklets displaying 6 sample photos of each film they shoot. That’s very smart as it allows me to look at the sample and characteristic of each film before buying.
The film sample booklet
SNAPPP also does developing services but at a much higher price. The good thing is they are able to do push processing for your colour films! This means they can help to overexpose your films in the machine if you wish. Such is good if you are using super expired film that may degrade in the quality and need to be overly exposed to be able to see any photos.
However, you can only collect your developed films after 2 working days. The super friendly staff said they can send you the scanned images online and you can collect the hard copy when you are back. Or just arrange a mailing service.
Below is their price list:
SNAPPP Pricelist
Basically, 35mm colour negative developing + scanning costs: 150NTD, Black & White 180 NTD.
120mm colour negative & black white: 180NTD.
35mm Motion film: 220NTD. 120mm: 250NTD.
In conclusion, I am overwhelmed by the choices of film developing labs in Taipei. There are more than these 5 listed labs in Taipei, you just have to dig. Oh, I forgot to mention Lomography Store Taipei also does developing. But I suspect the price would be insane.
On a side note, there are also a few good labs in Tai Chung, Hua Lien and southern part like Kao Hsiung! Film is so alive in Taiwan!
You might be interested to know where to develop films in Bangkok, Hong Kong, Johor and Singapore, too.
If you are new to this film photography blog, Start Here! Or browse through the Film Look section for some samples of each film!
This is very helpful! Thank you!
So helpful, thank you for the great information 👌 FYI I was looking in Lomography yesterday, the prices seemed similar to SNAPPP also with the option for posting the film, but the time frame for developing was up to 10days
Thanks for telling me Sara 🙂
For the shop near shilin night market do you know what’s the pricing for the developing + scanning? And for the rest of the shops how do they give you the scanned photos? Is it through email or via a CD/Thumbdrive? Thank you! Really loved this article and am looking forward to visiting these shops!
I can’t remember the exact pricing, sorry! But the price won’t be too far off from other shops. They give the photos via CD. 🙂
Hi! Love your blogpost! I’ll be going to Taiwan in June and this got me so excited to shoot film there. Question though: do you know where could I find cheap films in Taiwan and how much they cost? Thank you!
I guess all the film shops that I listed in this blogpost sell films at reasonable price except SNAPPP and Lomography store 🙂
This is a really comprehensive list, thanks so much! How big are the files from Rainbow in the Sky, and do they email files to you or give a CD?
Also, do you take 3 white photos first to ‘trick’ the machine into calibrating colours properly?
Thanks!
Hey!!
Thanks so much for the post! I’m living in Taipei and have been having some trouble finding cheap spots. My local friends recommended me spots for $150, but they were closed and I ended up finding what seemed like a popular spot that does it for $200 per role with no discount if you have more roles (I had about 5 to develop). And they took 5 days to do it. Good thing I didn’t get it developed there! Good to know there are much cheaper spots around. I will go try $60 one 🙂
Hi, thank you so much for this. I’ve found that number 2. 林屋照相器材有限公司 has closed. Instead down the street at No. 56, Bo’ai Road, Zhongzheng District, Taipei City, Taiwan 100 offers a similar service at 100ntd for colour (2 hours) , 180ntd for black and white (1 week) and 180ntd for ECN-2 (one week) all through a Dropbox service.
I hope that helps keep this awesome page relevant.
Hey Nathan, thanks for letting us know! 🙂