Really poor customer service, they really don'tcare about customers and website contains errors, to ensure you buy what you think you are, would strongly suggest you go elsewhere.

It's getting more difficult to develop film myself. Vanbar is the distributor for a few products like Patterson Tanks and photo developing/fixing chemicals at a reasonable price. Staff are knowledgeable in film as well.

I have been here a few times and don't have a bad word about the place. The staff are helpful friendly and far less pushy than any other photography store I've shopped at. Today the shop assistant gave me information about options including ones they couldn't get in stock, I feel like I was given all options available for the item I was looking at and left feeling more informed and sure of my purchase.
I will return for any other photography purchases.

Vanbar is one of the very few places around which still deal in film and developing photos. Digital is great but there are just some things which require the different options film gives you. Of course it costs a bit more, but there's not much alternative. Rolls of film $8 - 14.

For digital photos they have machines where you can print your own photos. It can take a while, but you can lighten, darken and crop your photos to suit. We recently did a whole lot of our trip photos here and once you know the machine, you can do this fairly quickly - about 17c per print.

They offer a lot of services at this place, and its for professional photographers to get their really top notch equipment from. There are brands from all over the world. Half of the stuff in here is too high tech for me, but it's amazing the range of equipment they have. There is a rental division, a spare parts service, camera sales, darkroom equipment, lighting,cases, tripods and also on-line photo service.

They're open from 8.30 - 5.30 on weekdays and until 5.00 on Saturdays. If you're really into that sort of thing, you can get a VIP membership which entitles you to discounts and monthly specials.

The staff are highly professional and pretty passionate about photography but they're not the kind of people you want to ask how to take a basic photo.

All in all, a pretty amazing place.

Wanbars has a huge variety of stock, and their new showroom in Fitzroy is fantastic, a huge improvement over the old one with plenty of room for more stock. However, staff are very sales oriented and sometimes it is a bit hard to tell whether they are being informative, or just pushing a sale.

Getting photos printed here is VERY costly, especially high res image scanning.

Quality of stock that they carry is great.

Approximate cost: $-