Ken's Camera Lives!

Originally published on July 18, 2018. Updated September 15, 2022.

Ken’s Camera: it’s the last place in Everett you can get film developed in-house. As far as I can tell, it’s the last place in Snohomish County where you can still get film developed in-house. I recently met a guy who lives on Whidbey Island and takes a ferry here just to visit Ken’s on Highway 99.

It’s a cool place filled with camera equipment, a second-generation family business.

Sure, you can take your film to your local Bartell’s or Walgreen’s. They’ll have to ship it to Seattle to get developed. That’s a two-to-three week wait.

Ken’s develops in one hour, three days a week. That means you can often get your film same day. At most you have to wait half a week to get your pics.

Who cares about film, you ask? Why should anyone care in a day when everyone carries high resolution cameras in the form of megapixel-snapping smartphones?

Good question.

Film takes focus. Small mistakes can ruin the process. There’s a huge margin for human error. I’ve loaded film cartridges wrong and lost 24 memories in the form of ruined exposures. I’ve lost invaluable moments because I jolted the camera at the wrong millisecond or had the camera set to the wrong shutter speed.

This is part of the thrill of shooting film. It’s not foolproof, but the trade-off is that the focus is meditative. It forces you to really see your surroundings.

Having archival-quality, non-pixelated printed photos in crisp colors is one of the strange joys of the modern era. I have hundreds of digital photos on my social media accounts, but no hard copies of these moments. (My experience with those photo printing kiosks has been lackluster — the red balance is splotchy or the machine auto crops the photos in bizarre, head-chopping-off ways).

So, Ken’s. You can get all the camera goods there. Flashes, Polaroid cameras, film and tripods. They have a lot to offer the digital photographer, too, including digital prints.

And of course, they print photos. Quickly.

Check it out and support a local family business still practicing a craft that’s strangely relevant in our age of digital disposability.