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Recently we found out LAist is full of film photography loving journalists. Here are several personal recommendations from our staff on where to go around Southern California for your film developing needs.
Why it matters: Finding the right film lab for yourself is an important part in film photography, according to Harvey Film Lab founder Kacie.
Read on:...to find your film photography home.
Before digital cameras and smartphones became ubiquitous it was film photography that reigned supreme. Back in the day that meant a trip to your local film processing store to get those negatives developed. Today a convenient alternative is the local CVS Photo Lab. They can get you scans and digital prints, but they no longer return your negatives.
So if you want those originals back, and for a chance to engage with your local photography scene – here are some independent film developing shops in L.A. and O.C. hand-picked by LAist’s photography-loving staff.
Powell Camera Shop
160 West Badillo Street
Covina, CA 91723
First up our General Assignment Reporter Destiny Torres frequents this San Gabriel Valley location.
What do they develop?
They take standard 35mm and medium format 120mm film and can use both C-41 and E-6 processing.
What’ll it cost me?
It varies depending on what you want back. Just developing the negatives will run you $9.99 before taxes. If you want color digital scans as well as prints: between $15 and 20 dollars. If you prefer black and white scans in addition to prints: between $22 and $32, according to Frankie Barron, a manager of Powell.
How long does it take to develop?
Your best bet is to go in person as Powell rarely accepts mail in negatives. It should take a week to get your photos back. The store doesn’t develop photos on site but sends them to professional developers at Swan Photo Labs in San Clemente.
Samy’s Camera
1759 E. Colorado Blvd.
Pasadena, CA 91106
If you’ve ever been interested in cameras and you’ve spent some time in Pasadena chances are you’ve heard of Samy’s Camera. This recommendation comes from AirTalk producer Lucy Copp.
What do they develop?
The shop takes various film formats including 35mm, medium format 120mm. They can also develop 4 by 5 and 8 by 10 large format or sheet film.
What’ll it cost me?
35mm film will cost you $6 a roll for color, $8 a roll for black and white. For color photo scans in 35mm and 120mm the cost is around $12 for low resolution, $18 for medium resolution, and $25 for high resolution. Adding prints? For 24 photos it'll be between $9.96 and $10.83. Thirty-six photos will cost you between $13.44 and $13.73.
How long does it take to develop?
Negatives will take two to five business days. Prints and scans will take about a week to 10 days. Samy's lets you drop off negatives in store at their locations in Santa Ana, Pasadena and Fairfax. Negatives are sent to their photo lab in the Fairfax area for development, according to Pasadena employee Dana Mooradian. All 35mm and 120mm color film development is done at the Fairfax location. Black and white and large format are sent to the Icon lab in Los Angeles for development.
Analog Photomart
416 E 2nd St.
Los Angeles, CA 90012
Our Major Gifts Officer Malka Fenyvesi also frequents Samy’s, but recently she’s noticed a new store in Little Tokyo.
What do they develop?
The store is about a year old, owner Bryan Hong says they’re able to take color, black and white, and slide film in both 35 mm and 120mm.
What’ll it cost me?
Getting negatives developed will cost you $9. Add scans and the price goes up to $15 for low resolution, $18 for medium, and higher resolution for $23. Black and white development will cost a buck more across the board. 35mm prints will be $12 a roll. 120mm will cost the same for developing and scanning, but getting prints will only cost you $6.
How long does it take to develop?
This small neighborhood shop only accepts in store drop offs. They don’t do any business online. To get the scans to your e-mail takes 3 to 4 business days. To get negatives back it takes about a week, and up to 10 days for prints.
Berry Flash Photo Lab
11445 Jefferson Blvd.
Culver City, CA 90230
AirTalk Senior Producer Lindsey Wright is also a Samy’s regular, but lately she’s been going to a spot on the Westside.
What do they develop?
Berry Flash has you covered when it comes to 35mm and 120 mm, in either color or black and white. Negatives-only for 110mm. For 35mm you can choose between two different film processes, E-6 or C-41.
What’ll it cost me?
Standard color C-41 35mm processing will cost you $9.99. 120mm processing will be $14.99. Scans plus negatives for 35mm is $19.99 for “social friendly scans.” They also offer higher resolutions at $24.99. 120mm starts at $24.99, and $29.99 for high res. According to Berry Flash lab technician Natalia Delgado, if you want prints too just tack on an extra $10.
How long does it take to develop?
If you drop off your film at the main lab location in Culver City typical turnaround time is 2 to 3 business days for color negatives. Up to 10 days for black and white. You can also mail in your photos to Berry Flash Photo Lab. Their P.O. Box for mailing in film is:
Berry Flash Photo Lab
3019 Ocean Park Blvd., #370
Santa Monica, CA 90405
Tuttle Cameras
5467 E. Carson St.
Long Beach, CA 90808
AirTalk associate producer Manny Valladares loves to hit up this Long Beach location for both film developing and film gear.
What do they develop?
Tuttle Cameras can handle 35mm, 120mm, and 110mm film. Store associate Julian Lee says they process color, black & white, and slide for all formats as well.
What’ll it cost me?
Developing your 35mm film will cost $8.25. Adding scans will be $18.50. Tuttle offers different size files. Scans larger than 12 mb will run about ten dollars more each. Prints will cost anywhere between $12 and $18 depending on the number of exposures you want.
How long does it take to develop?
To get your negative scans back it’ll take around 1 to 2 days on weekdays and 2 to 3 days on weekends. You can drop your film off or mail it directly to the store. Tuttle partners with local developer Fromex for film processing.
Bill’s Camera
6022 Warner Ave.
Huntington Beach, CA 92647
Bill's an O.C. favorite that’s been around since 1971.
What do they develop?
According to lab manager Josh Ventura, Bill's can develop all color film in 35mm, 120mm and APS formats.
What’ll it cost me?
$6.50 for 35mm negatives and $7.50 for 120mm negatives. Add scans to those and it’ll be $13.95 for 35mm and $14.90 for 120mm. Including prints will cost you anywhere between an additional $13 and $16 depending on the roll and the format.
How long does it take to develop?
Ventura says the typical turnaround time for the negatives is 24 hours. 120mm will take two days. You are also able to mail your negatives into the shop. All color film development is done on site. Black and white film is sent to a third party.
The Frida Cinema/Harvey Film Lab
305 E 4th St #100
Santa Ana, CA 92701
Sticking with Orange County for our final recommendation. Why not see a movie as you drop off your negatives? The one-person development operation Harvey Film Lab has a drop box at Orange County’s only independent art house theater.
What do they develop?
Kacie from Harvey Film Lab says they can develop 35mm and 120mm film, in both color and black & white.
What’ll it cost me?
Basic scans for 35mm will start at $14.70, which includes getting your negatives back too. If you want prints it’ll be an additional $14.99.
How long does it take to develop?
Film is developed exclusively on site and takes one to 7 business days. You can mail your film to them directly, or purchase services online then head over to the Frida Cinema for drop off. For pick-up you can go in-person or have them mailed to you.
That’s it! Go forth and take your pictures! But remember to get your film developed as soon as possible for the best looking photos.
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“Roots of Our Labor,” a new mural unveiled this week by LA Commons across the street from MacArthur Park.
What they created: The mural shows a tree bearing avocados and oranges, with a trunk made of intertwined hands and a farmer harvesting the fruit. On one side, a tamale vendor is depicted selling food, and on the other, an ice cream vendor pushes a cart as children gather around him. In the background, scenes from MacArthur Park play out.
Before they ever picked up a paintbrush, youth artists behind a new mural in MacArthur Park started by listening.
“We interviewed people in MacArthur Park about their experiences living in the community,” said Tania Castro, a recent high school graduate and one of 20 young artists who worked on the project. “Some stories were a little bit sad because they said they lost their jobs and they need more opportunities.”
Those conversations shaped “Roots of Our Labor,” a new mural unveiled this week by LA Commons across the street from MacArthur Park. The project, led by artists Luis Mateo and Shakir Manners, draws from stories collected in a yearlong process from more than 75 residents in and around MacArthur Park.
Castro says those stories were about more than struggle.
“They also said they loved the community. In the park, you can see a lot of vendors selling things like fruit and ice cream,” she said. “And the kids love it.”
The mural shows a tree bearing avocados and oranges, with a trunk made of intertwined hands and a farmer harvesting the fruit. On one side, a tamale vendor is depicted selling food, and on the other, an ice cream vendor pushes a cart as children gather around him. In the background, scenes from MacArthur Park play out.
In a neighborhood where ongoing immigration raids have fueled fear and instability, and where MacArthur Park is often defined by visible homelessness and crime, organizers said the mural is intended to highlight the diverse communities who live there and to frame the park as a shared space of connection, culture and daily life.
“I enjoyed making it because it really teaches us about the importance of community and being more inclusive and kind to each other,” said high school artist Leslie Gonzalez. “Most of the people we talked to told us about their backgrounds and they weren’t that pleasant but they still pushed through and got together for each other.”
Painted in March at the Central American Resource Center (CARECEN), the mural is installed on the southeastern side of the UCLA James Lawson Jr. Worker Justice Center.
“Immigrants are critical to the community, especially here in MacArthur Park,” said Beth Peterson, community arts program director at LA Commons. “And I think the mural does a beautiful job of really sharing that story. It really shows how the hands of immigrants have really hung together to form this very beautiful community that we live in today.”
For the lead artists, working alongside youth was central to how the art took shape.
“This artwork honors both the neighborhood and the people who shape it,” Mateo said. “Working with youth was essential to the process, allowing the mural to emerge from shared reflection rather than a single perspective.”
The new mural builds on LA Commons’ ongoing work in the area, following another mural unveiled last September at MacArthur Park Elementary School. “Roots of Our Labor” is the organization’s second mural supported by Stop the Hate, a statewide initiative led by the Asian American and Pacific Islander community aimed at addressing hate incidents and promoting cross-cultural understanding.
LA Commons, a nonprofit arts organization that creates community-based public art projects through partnerships and a mix of public and private funding, has been in the MacArthur Park area for more than 20 years. Its first public art project in the neighborhood was in 2003. “Roots of Our Labor” is its 22nd public art project in MacArthur Park.
Manners, the artist, described the mural as a reflection of what he sees as the underlying spirit of MacArthur Park.
It represents “the unseen hands that sustain communities, emphasizing that true progress is built collectively through persistence, sacrifice and shared purpose,” he said.
For Gonzalez, the mural is personal as well as something tied closely to her community.
“I feel like a light has shone on me and I’m proud of it because I’ve never done anything this big before,” she said.
The post New mural celebrates labor, multicultural community around MacArthur Park appeared first on LA Local.
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The phone lines at the East L.A. Sheriff’s Station are back up after more than two months of outages caused by copper wire theft.
How we got here: Boyle Heights Beat reported on the issue, and residents raised concerns at a Maravilla Community Advisory Committee (MCAC) meeting on April 7 about difficulty reaching the station by phone for non-emergencies.
About the theft: The outage was caused by an incident on Feb. 13, where several thousand dollars’ worth of copper wiring was stolen from an electrical vault near the station, according to Sgt. Michael Mileski. Fiber optic cables were damaged in the process, which affected a significant portion of the Eastern Avenue corridor in Boyle Heights and East L.A., disrupting phone lines for 100,000 residents for five days, Mileski said.
The phone lines at the East L.A. Sheriff’s Station are back up after more than two months of outages caused by copper wire theft.
The update comes just one week after Boyle Heights Beat reported on the issue, and residents raised concerns at a Maravilla Community Advisory Committee (MCAC) meeting on April 7 about difficulty reaching the station by phone for non-emergencies.
According to the East L.A. Sheriff’s Station, service was restored on Thursday, April 23. By Friday, all dispatchers were back working in the station after temporarily operating out of an off-site communications trailer connected via satellite.
“This was made possible due to the concerted efforts of the East Los Angeles Sheriff Station Captains Hinchman and Kusayanagi, AT&T, and our Communications & Fleet Management Bureau,” the station said in a statement to the Beat.
The station also thanked Assemblymember Jessica Caloza’s office and community stakeholders who contacted AT&T to express urgency.
Sheriff’s officials previously said they had called Caloza’s office to help speed up repairs by communicating with AT&T.
According to Sgt. Michael Mileski, the outage was caused by an incident on Feb. 13, where several thousand dollars’ worth of copper wiring was stolen from an electrical vault near the station. Fiber optic cables were damaged in the process, which affected a significant portion of the Eastern Avenue corridor in Boyle Heights and East L.A., disrupting phone lines for 100,000 residents for five days, Mileski said.
AT&T said in a statement that copper cable outages generally take five times longer to repair on average than fiber outages.
Copper wire theft has plagued the Eastside in recent years, leaving communities in the dark and disabling public facilities.
LA Documenter Alex Medina contributed reporting for this story. LA Documenters trains and pays LA residents to take notes at local government meetings around Los Angeles. You can find meeting notes and audio at losangeles.documenters.org
The story Phone lines restored at East LA Sheriff’s Station after 2-month outage due to copper wire theft appeared first on LA Local.
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Californians this fall will decide whether to require voters to show proof of citizenship before casting ballots.
Background: A GOP-backed voter ID ballot initiative on Friday qualified for the Nov. 3 ballot, marking a significant win for San Diego Assemblymember Carl DeMaio, who led the signature-gathering campaign. DeMaio and other Republican operatives have pushed for tighter voter restrictions in deep-blue California for years.
What would the measure do? If voters approve it, they would be required to show a government-issued ID each time they go to the polls, while mail-in ballots would need the last-four digits of an ID, such as a driver’s license. The secretary of state and county election offices would also be required to verify voters’ registration each time they vote.
Read on ... for more about the ballot initiative.
Californians this fall will decide whether to require voters to show proof of citizenship before casting ballots.
A GOP-backed voter ID ballot initiative on Friday qualified for the Nov. 3 ballot, marking a significant win for San Diego Assemblymember Carl DeMaio, who led the signature-gathering campaign. DeMaio and other Republican operatives have pushed for tighter voter restrictions in deep-blue California for years.
If voters approve it, they would be required to show a government-issued ID each time they go to the polls, while mail-in ballots would need the last-four digits of an ID, such as a driver’s license. The secretary of state and county election offices would also be required to verify voters’ registration each time they vote.
Currently, voters only need to provide an ID and Social Security number when they register to vote. Thirty-six states require or recommend voters show some form of identification at the polls, according to a 2025 report by the National Conference of State Legislatures.
“This is an initiative that’s incredibly popular amongst Democrats and Republicans,” GOP state Sen. Tony Strickland of Huntington Beach told CalMatters. “I think the only way we don’t get this passed is if we get [outspent]. So we’re working very hard with an on-the-ground campaign apparatus.”
Strickland and others who have helped lead the campaign attribute the initiative’s rapid certification to Julie Luckey, mother of tech billionaire Palmer Luckey who helped seed the majority of the $10 million the campaign committee has raised in the past year.
Voting rights groups say the initiative will suppress turnout among eligible voters who don’t have the documents on hand, many of whom are disproportionately poor and people of color.
Opponents, including the state’s most powerful labor unions, plan to campaign heavily against it.
Voter fraud is rare in California. However, claims of fraud and concerns about election integrity have risen since President Donald Trump touted false claims that the 2020 election was stolen.
Californians broadly support voter identification at the polls but are split along ideological lines when given specific details about the ballot measure, according to a 2026 poll from the UC Berkeley Institute of Government Studies. When told the measure is meant to combat voter fraud and that it could suppress eligible votes, support dipped to 37%.
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In the journal Science, researchers present evidence for ancient colossal octopuses — what they believe are the largest invertebrates ever described.
How was the discovery made? Using innovative fossil reconstruction techniques, the researchers revealed remnants of two extinct species locked inside large rocks.
How big were they? They appear to have been up to 60 feet long — longer than a school bus — rivaling other apex predators of the time, and calling to mind the Kraken of legend.
Read on ... for more on the science behind these fascinating creatures.
A hundred million years ago during the late Cretaceous period, the oceans were filled with giant predators, prowling for their next meal. There was the mosasaur — a giant toothy marine reptile (and a surprise hero in Jurassic World). There were large sharks.
And now, in the journal Science, researchers present evidence for ancient colossal octopuses — what they believe are the largest invertebrates ever described. Using innovative fossil reconstruction techniques, the researchers revealed remnants of two extinct species locked inside large rocks. They appear to have been up to 60 feet long — longer than a school bus — rivaling other apex predators of the time, and calling to mind the Kraken of legend.
"I wasn't expecting any octopus of this magnitude at all," says Fernando Ángel Fernández-Álvarez, a zoologist at the Spanish Institute of Oceanography who wasn't involved in the study. "And we now have the proof that they were living in the past."
The findings also reveal that these squishy leviathans likely feasted on crunchy prey items (think shrimp and lobster) and favored one side of their jaw over the other.
"I already thought octopuses were extraordinary animals," says Yasuhiro Iba, a paleontologist at Hokkaido University and lead author on the new publication. "But this study made me feel even more strongly that their uniqueness has deep evolutionary roots."
The findings are all the more remarkable because octopuses don't tend to preserve well.
Fossils usually form from bones and other hard materials. So a creature like an octopus — which is made up of almost entirely soft tissue — has been harder to come by in the fossil record.
"There are very few, very rare records about the octopus and their evolution," says Jörg Mutterlose, a paleontologist at Ruhr University Bochum in Germany and one of the researchers. This has limited our understanding of the development of these creatures and their habitats across time.
But more than a decade ago, Iba approached Mutterlose with an idea. He wanted to examine the fossilized contents of big rocks called concretions that had formed on the seafloor some 100 million years ago in what's now northern Japan.
"We thought there was a real possibility that octopus remains might also be hidden inside them," says Iba, "even if nothing was visible from the outside."
So he approached Mutterlose and they worked together, using a new technique that they call digital fossil-mining. They cut the concretions into thin slices, took pictures of any preserved fossils, and then created 3D reconstructions, a process facilitated by an AI model.
And there, locked inside, were octopus jaws, "which is very similar to the beak of a bird," says Mutterlose. They consist of a lower jaw, "which is like a shovel" and an upper jaw. Octopus jaws are hard, so they can fossilize.
And the animals use them like we do — to chomp down on food. The jaws aren't big enough to swallow a large animal, says Mutterlose, so the ancient octopuses would have used their long, strong arms to catch prey and "tear it apart into pieces."
The lower jaws were the biggest ones ever found for an octopus, and they offered a window into the lives of these animals. Considering work done in other species, Mutterlose says, "archaeologists reconstruct quite a lot about evolutionary history simply based on the size and form of teeth."
To that end, he and his colleagues used the jaws to estimate the body size of the octopuses. And that's when their calculations revealed that these animals were probably gargantuan — well larger than the giant Pacific octopus, today's biggest member of the family whose arm span often exceeds 13 feet.
Closer inspection of the specimens revealed numerous chips and scratches. "Obviously, something happened to the jaws," observes Mutterlose.
That something was likely the consumption of prey with hard exoskeletons, including shrimp, bivalves, lobsters and nautilus-like animals that would have worn away the jaw as they were crushed and eaten, leaving the marks behind.
These were active carnivores — and the researchers say they may have even hunted other large predators, but this remains speculative.
In addition, the right side of the jaws tended to be more worn down than the left side. "Single-sided usage might indicate that the brain was already fairly well developed," suggests Mutterlose. This means that these early octopuses may have already been displaying the advanced intelligence that they are known for today.
"Modern octopuses are intelligent, flexible and very unusual predators," says Iba. "Our results suggest that some of those remarkable traits may already have been emerging in early octopuses during the Cretaceous."
One can discern quite a lot from a few key specimens, says Mutterlose. "Just [a] few fossil findings may shed very new light on the evolution of the biosphere," he says.
Fernández-Álvarez says the results paint a vivid picture of the ocean ecosystem of the late Cretaceous — one that would have been filled with myriad large and hungry predators.
It must have been, he says, "a very majestic view."
