FilmBox by Photomyne Reviews

by Hugh Cares (I Do)

FilmBox is quite awful to say the least. The so called “auto cropping” feature only seemed to work once out of my several dozen tries. The colours are supremely off compared to scans I have done with the exact same negatives using even amateur equipment, which for me is the biggest issue. Also the scans from FilmBox seem as though they are altered to be more grainy and have more noise in the images than there should be, almost like those vintage Super 8 emulator apps. Even just taking a photo and reversing the negative in photoshop myself is significantly better and only takes marginally more time and effort. Would not recommend unless you don’t have any other options to scan negatives.

edit:

After receiving a response from the developer with their typical “negative has to be two inches from computer screen and the camera needs to see the side holes” response that every review gets, I have a bit more to say.

It isn’t a problem with the distance from the backlight or the framing of the negative. I read the instructions before trying to scan my negatives and when I had poor results I read the reviews. Holding the negative the supposed proper distance, or closer or further, has little to no effect on the grainy results and even less on the washed out and dull colours.

Upon further consideration, would give zero stars to FilmBox if I could, and negative stars to the copied and pasted response nearly every review gets from the developer.

by Dumbo7777

UPDATE....After receiving a response it said I could contact a developer. I sent an email With my comment & a copy of response. All I got in return was the identical comment as the first time. The support system is totally useless!

I downloaded FilmBox today to do 6 negatives. I had to try each a couple times. After approximately 12 scans it would not let me scan any more without upgrading, even though it said free for 3 days. It was less than 3 hours! The scans I did were not that great even following the directions. Not happy with FilmBox & not worth $5.99 a month. I have deleted app from phone & definitely will not be using it again.

by Michaelv6789

I looked at the feedback the developer gave others to make sure I was using FilmBox properly, but it still did not work well. I figured it wouldn't work well, it seemed too good too be true. Scanning is very tedious at home, so I thought it was worth a shot. Considering this is a monthly paid subscription it definitely doesn't work well. My worst amateur flat bed scans are 1000x better than these photos. I would give FilmBox a better review if it was free or one time fee of a dollar. It wouldn't produce useable results, but it could be used for a simple preview if a back light is not available. I could also see a free option be useful for someone who quickly wants to show their older family members some kind of image of their old negatives, but I'd never post or show any of the images I got from FilmBox . The advertisement video is very misleading.

by Jhdjjebdkdndn

Buy a flatbed scanner, yes it is five times the price if you pay for unlimited use of FilmBox , but the images out of FilmBox at best are a low quality 2 megapixel image that is not even good enough for Instagram which already absolutely crushes photos. FilmBox would be overpriced if it was a one time payment of $5.99. But they expect to charge you that amount every month. Most people I know who need to scan film, either old family photos or photos they are actively are taking will have enough film to justify spending the money on a real scanner. A flatbed scanner pays for itself after only 20 photos or so compared to having them scanned by a lab. DO NOT GIVE YOUR MONEY TO FilmBox.

by Mkhoviyeun

Hi there! I came across FilmBox and thought it was too good to be true. I wasted my time DL-ing FilmBox and then wasted more time to watch their intro, and then come to see “try 3 days free then $5.99/month”, don’t waste your time DL-ing FilmBox if you’re NOT gonna pay to use this feature. With $5.99 I can just go get my pictures develop at the store and the pictures quality are probably 1000% better. I was a little disappointed that I cannot try it free for the first time, to see if I really liked the quality of the picture. Imagine taking a picture on your computer monitor screen, the picture is distorted or blurry, or just bad quality. I would not recommend FilmBox, and oh yeah I deleted FilmBox in a split of a second.

by Calculatedx

Don’t waist your time if you want to scan more than 5 photos. FilmBox work pretty well. It’s Easy to use and definitely scans the pictures well. I was surprised how well it worked, and I think it’s so cool that FilmBox exists. However, it’s definitely not worth the $30 which is what you have to pay every year if you don’t want to be able to scan only about 10 photos then i will make you pay. And the most ridiculous part is you can’t even save YOUR OWN pictures unless you pay. And, if you try to screenshot a picture it will watermark all your pictures and make to to where you can’t remove the watermark!

by Elky70

FilmBox is pretty straight forward to use and it does a good job auto cropping the picture. It is hard to find a good backlight source where you don’t pic up other objects with glare. My biggest complaint is that you have to be on subscription to use it. I will never buy an app on subscription unless it is per year. FilmBox has no reason to be on a monthly subscription, other than to take money from people that forget to unsubscribe. There is no update content or development that happens beyond regular updates for iOS system updates. I would gladly pay a set price for this. $5-10$ is fair, in my opinion. Reach out to me developers if you want to make a one time sale. It would improve your rating. 👍🏻

by Sebastodore

why do you only advertise the $30 price?? I came here to write a bad review because there were no other payment options, and had to find out about the monthly option from the reviews? Just bad marketing, honestly.

Features are fantastic especially for how easy they are to use (only with premium). I recommend the $6/mo to start unless you’ll be using FilmBox consistently for 2 years. Bummer they don’t have an in between.

I wish the auto crop feature was a little better considering I don’t have a single negative film that has holes. I’m scanning photos from 1933, not the ‘90s. I’m considering drawing strips of fake holes to place next to the photos so I’m not spending a full minute to hand crop each photo after scanning.

by Unfeeble

FilmBox is easy to use. I did use my imac as a backing light source to take pics of the hand held negs initially but the I learned to just take the edge of the neg strip to my computer screen. My just holding up to the light was too shaky. Once i did this it worked very well. My expectations were met. The image editing was rudimentary but quite sufficient. I would offer it as a suggestion to anyone looking to capture old negatives and convert them to images.

by PC1957

FilmBox does a great job capturing images from negatives of all sizes and auto processing for you. I like the ability to capture images by just holding the iPhone by hand. If filters any minor shaking and captures a still and crisp final image. It provides additional editing tools for post processing. The cropping tool could benefit from guide lines to assist in achieving a square image by hand tweaking every corner. Hope to see something like that in the future.

by How Now Brown Cow?

I love FilmBox. I just started using it today. Easy to figure everything out and I love the color fix to change from black and white. I’ve shared some very old photos that would be lost forever. I had thought about getting someone to make pictures from the negatives but found it very expensive.

I would recommend this to anyone who has a lot of old negatives that they would like to breathe new life into.

Upon using FilmBox , my phone said I didn’t have room to use any of my apps. I deleted a lot of apps. Today I found the problem. this app filled my photo app with many, many, many duplicate pictures. I hope they can fix this. I may have to delete their app if they don’t.

by Tribal Gambler

I’ve been waiting for a simple easy way to view negatives I have. I actually have old negatives I found in my moms belongs after she was gone. FilmBox has allowed me to view these, in some cases treasure photos that no one in my family has ever seen. I’m sure there are other ways I could have viewed these negatives or just had them develop but with FilmBox I am able to view so easily without a lot of effort or expense.

by Llouis86

I had photos of my now 18 year old son on old film and my dad. My son and I have been apart for 16 years and my dad died 10 years ago. Bringing these pictures back to life, brought back a lot of feeling. Gave me the strength and courage to find my son. He’s a big man now!🥰 Thanks. No joke I was only going to do the 3 day free trial, but it work! I got to pay for this. Walgreens wanted $100 deposit, could be more and it would take 3 weeks. Thanks again this app!

by Eranxadi1111

My daughter heard of FilmBox on TikTok and of course I had to download it cause I had some negatives that I’ve had since 2005. My mom passed away in June of 2018 and I had to see some old pics that we took with her while I was visiting that year. And all I want to say is THANK YOU SOOOO MUCH cause it brought back so many memories and it saved me a trip to the store to develop them. I would highly recommend FilmBox to everyone.

by Honeybee4819

I have been going through a box of old negatives of my mom's. There are hundreds to view and I have been finding photos I have never seen before. This is an easy process and it's wonderful to find pictures I didn't know existed. You have the option to colorize as well. Not all of them turned out as well as I had hoped but that really was due to the condition of the negative rather than a flaw in FilmBox . I highly recommend.

by Lil J 78

We used the light source FilmBox recommends and on our first scan my knees buckled. I can’t believe this is even possible and the results are amazing. After recently finding old pictures of family from the 50’s that are starting to crack and fade this is a life saver for not having to ship them all off and hope they don’t get lost or ruined. We are so happy with FilmBox and will be upgrading now that we know how easy this is and how awesome the quality is.

by Crazycam0123

FilmBox is amazing. I had found some film when I was cleaning and wanted to look at them but I did not know where to go. Than I heard about FilmBox on social. I was pretty iffy about it but I just wanted to try it out. It actually work it transform the films in to pictures like it says! Only thing I am not a fan of the payment to keep the photos off FilmBox which honestly okays. Those pictures are worth it. If I had a chance to do an add for it I wouldn’t pass it 😂😂😂!
But honestly in my opinion I am truly happy about FilmBox.

by Bonnie 🌹

I have an old box of negatives, most from 1950’s through 1980’s. I want to have them scanned but most has to have a special scanner due to negative size. I checked a few places for pricing to scan them, very expensive to get them done so I stored them about 16 years ago. I found FilmBox on FilmBox Store and gave it a try.... I am in awe of how well FilmBox works. I would recommend FilmBox to anyone that has old negatives they want to turn into pictures. I don’t think five stars is enough to rate FilmBox, hats off to you!!! ❤️

by Yordyyn

I was very skeptical about FilmBox considering the negative reviews, but when I tried it I was blown away. It recognizes the pictures easily and turns them into photos with no problem as long as you follow the directions!! Also you don’t have to get a subscription, they have a free option as well. If you are looking for the subscription it’s only 5.99$ a month which is a lot cheaper than renting a local dark room. The only complaint I have is the grainy look it adds to the photos. But maybe they will fix it in the future. I love FilmBox !!!

by Bailey23456

I found a large box with a couple hundred old negatives. OLD negatives going back to the 1920’s. I tried holding them up to a light to look at them but it wasn’t good enough.
I searched for an answer, not wanting to have to take them all somewhere to be developed.
I found FilmBox and I was so excited. I bought a device about 10”x12” that lights up. I call it a tracing board. I used my phone to take pictures of the negatives that were lit up by the tracing board. Like magic the negatives became positives in the pictures I took.
I found old pics of my mom, dad, other family and friends that are absolutely priceless!! I had so much fun! I highly recommend FilmBox!

by Aliya_aloo

FilmBox doesn’t allow you to go past the tutorial. The whole thing doesn’t work

by DancerLS85

This application provides the images on the negatives, but they are very poor quality. The images looks extremely bad. Not worth the subscription.

by Silverandshadow

FilmBox doesn’t download fully. Your click on “quick start” it puts you into a demo that doesn’t have any other way out but going back to the starting page, that doesn’t let you actually scan.

by JLEnicknametaken

Followed instructions exactly, even using the website for backlighting. Pictures turn out looking worse than the slide, with colors inverted. No FAQS that addresses this issue. Very frustrating. Be careful because you have to start a “free trial” which auto-charges you in three days.

by Solagish24

Was excited to use. Horrible quality. Doesn’t scan the entire negative, automatically cropping a good 15% of the photo. I tried the “phone must be 2 in away” bs and it did nothing to help quality or cropping. Tried to retake photos a bunch of times. Nothing worked. Even if it was free I wouldn’t waste the memory on my phone.

by ES51

The idea of scanning photo negatives from an iPhone is a great idea; however the photo image quality you get using FilmBox is very poor and not worth the monthly subscription. If the image quality was great then this would be an ideal app to help capture and store old images from negatives.

The concept and idea is there but FilmBox developer needs to work on improving the image quality.

by Keeping It Squatchy

DO NOT DOWNLOAD FilmBox!!! I wish I could give it negative stars. FilmBox will only let you scan a few photos before you’re required to give you credit card information to be used after your three day free trial. While this is frustrating but somewhat understandable, when you try to send yourself the few photos you have taken, it again requires you to sign up. Effectively FilmBox will not let you have your photos unless you give the company your information for photos YOU CREATED!!

by N.remo

As a professional film film photographer with years of film scanning experiences. I was really excited to try FilmBox. It looked super fun and user friendly.
The quality of the images is no where near what the adds show or what the tutorial showed. The camera doesn’t focus well, there a lot of motion blur with the handheld phone and the color is super muddy. I spent some time with it and really tried not make it work by troubleshooting to the best of my ability. I couldn’t get any images to scan well or look anything like what FilmBox says it’s capable of. Not impressed, pretty disappointed, I want my money back.

by Colin1717atx

I was impressed with the clarity of the scans it got right. The issue I’m having is that if there are changes in tone in the frame, FilmBox assumes it’s looking at 2 images. It would be nice to enforce a 35mm frame size or to turn off the auto crop feature.

by Chickenlittle1025

The quality of the photos are horrendous

by Eyebephoto

It seems to work pretty well except every photo I scan is over exposed

by Sahskia

Not so much the smaller ones, those it doesn’t pick up really.

by Fejim

Works well scanning really old negatives that belonged to my great grandfather and are from the early 1900s. Which are larger. Haven’t had success with 126 or 110 negatives.

by Kevincarrillo1333

FilmBox is amazing!! It works really well just wish it wasn’t a monthly thing and just a one time purchase