Pop stars coming back home have priorities just like the rest of us.
Dua Lipa, the British pop star behind chart-swallowing hits like ‘New Rules’, doesn’t see as much of her London home as she used to.
On Monday she posted on Instagram a picture of her shooting on an Olympus Mju compact and made it pretty clear what number one on her to-do list was now she was back: “Landed in London with a bunch of film to develop… “
Lipa is one of a clutch of music stars to recently fly the flag for film, alongside rappers Drake and Frank Ocean (shooting on the ultra-trendy Contax T2 and T3 respectively) aswell as ex-White Stripes frontman Jack White, who recently opened a film lab in Nashville.
The emoji at the end of Lipa’s post suggests she needs recommendations for labs, so Kosmo Foto’s pen tried-and-trusted recommendations are:
- Bayeux – one of London’s best pro-level labs on Newman St, just off Oxford Street.
- Analogue Films – a brand new lab which opened just a few weeks ago in Shoreditch, and quickly a firm face with you photographers.
- West End Cameras – they used to have a shop on Tottenham Court Road, now online-only. Perfect results for those shooting cheap, cheerful or chic compacts.
(Kosmo Foto also knows where Lipa can pick up a half-decent black-and-white film too…)
We’re aware that choice of lab is entirely subjective, of course, and there could be any number of other labs worth trying – so if you have a favourite, leave a comment below.
I'm a New Zealander who has been living in London since the mid-1990s, shooting film seriously since the year 2000. Kosmo Foto was launched in 2012 and has since become a film brand, with the release of my first films Kosmo Foto Mono 35mm (2017) and Kosmo Foto Mono 120 (2019).
I’m doing everything I can to promote film photography in the 21st Century, and help it survive and thrive. If you want to write something for Kosmo Foto, please drop me a line at foto.dowling@gmail.com.
Black and white and colour film developing and scanning and black and white printing is available on line from Harman (producers of Ilford film) at harmanlab.com