Category: Travel

Yes, you can develop your 35mm film in Ikebukuro in Japan. You can even have it scanned and saved.

There are many BIC cameras in Ikebukuro and after running around to each one there to check their directory, it’s the one called BIC CAMERA Ikebukuro PC Store:

To know which one, it’s the building that looks like a handphone and I had to go to the basement to find the counter.

I shot this at the Ghibli Museum using the Kodak Ektar h35n. If you’re using half frames, it’ll be scanned as full so you’ll have the little division there.

What resolution are they scanning your film? I screenshotted the details of mine. You can see it’s in 2211 x 1535.

What are the prices? This is the link to the BIC camera itself but do note, it might be different at the time you’re visiting and the time of the link’s pricing. It’s close to it from what I remember when I did it.

However, you do need to bring a phone or a laptop that can take a thumbdrive/card reader. There is no cloud transfer or email for the scans.

Make sure your phone has enough space to download all the photos too or it can download easily from a thumbdrive. I helped download my friend’s scanned film since his phone couldn’t easily find the drive.

Their ‘1 hour’ express service depends on that day if there’s a lot of film being developed, so do ask them if it is possible. The staff might not know a lot of English but they can point to the clock for the estimated time you can come back if you want to try express.

All the best! I wanted to develop my film in Japan itself since the newest terminal in Singapore’s airport apparently might have damaged my friend’s film going through the x-ray and I was a bit frightened of that. You can have it go through hand check but I figured, eh let’s just try shoot everything in Japan and develop in Japan.

Ps. In reality why I say check what time your film might be ready is cause on that day, we went in the afternoon after going around to each BIC Camera and looking at it and went “Huuuh” before we finally found one with the film development one in the basement. With friends we said in moderate Japanese “sashin” (camera) development while waving our film canisters and sumimasen-ing and “Eto..” and “Expressu?” they pointed to what time is available and we were ok cause we would still be in Ikebukuro shopping and eating dinner. And ok, we finished dinner but then BIC Camera has also closing times so we pretty much RAN TO THE STORE BEFORE IT CLOSED minutes before, grabbing our film and downloading in a frenzy to my phone and Arigato-ing to the staff cause else we wouldn’t be able to come back to Ikebukuro since the next day we had to go elsewhere and we wouldn’t be able to return to Japan??? LEAVING OUR FILMS BEHIND? NOOO I SAY NOT.

Pps. So yes, it’s better if you want to pick it up the next day next time if you have the time or do it in the morning…