where there’s smoke there’s forum fire
I am curious to where the best place to send in or to take your negatives to get High resolution scans of any size negative. 35mm up to 5x7 large format. medium format at max. I have a scanner at home but ive had absolutely no luck in getting a good scan out of a negative. It might just be me.
If any body knows a website that they send in C-41 process or B&W film for processing and high resolutions scans, i am very interested for myself
Rockwell is always advocating for NCPS. you might give them a try.
I'm writing a guide for this, smarterchild, but I do all my scanning myself. In the past I used a Minolta Scan Dual Elite II, a 35mm dedicated scanner, it gave good raw scans, at the equivalent of about 11 megapixels, and from there I could correct contrast and whatever. More recently I've been using the Epson 10000XL with a transparency head for scans at home, and at university I use an Epson V700 for just about everything.
I prefer printing in the darkroom, and just scanning the print, since I get a print out of it, and I don't have to do nearly as much dust and contrast correction on a print scan as a neg scan, but I don't always have the time to do both.
Most labs offer digital scans don't they? I don't think I know of one that doesn't offer the service. In fact even Walmart will develop your film and instead of prints you can ask for a cd with the images instead. I have a friend who does all of his medium format through walmart and never gets prints, just a cd.
If you want to do it yourself a dedicated film scanner is best. Nikon makes a pretty good one but it's freakin' expensive! But you can fine tune the results better than a "cheap" lab can.
I'm looking forward to reading your guide Chris.
ChrisLange said:
I'm writing a guide for this, smarterchild, but I do all my scanning myself. In the past I used a Minolta Scan Dual Elite II, a 35mm dedicated scanner, it gave good raw scans, at the equivalent of about 11 megapixels, and from there I could correct contrast and whatever. More recently I've been using the Epson 10000XL with a transparency head for scans at home, and at university I use an Epson V700 for just about everything.I prefer printing in the darkroom, and just scanning the print, since I get a print out of it, and I don't have to do nearly as much dust and contrast correction on a print scan as a neg scan, but I don't always have the time to do both.
How do you like the Epson 700, I have thought about getting one
Pete
Hmmm... Im in highschool and we have a darkroom for photo class and i can have about 3 hours a day i could sneak into the darkroom. I love printing in the darkroom. but somtimes its not always available for me and also. im limited to black and white only. Right now for C-41, ive just taken it to my local camera store or CVS. Cvs has been the ONLY place that ive been able to get decent scans with. My camera store offers High resolution scanning for 5 dollars extra. and i always come out with 30kb files. resolution is so bad.
Heres an example of Cvs
Heres Scan from cord camera (my local store)
There must be a place out there thats better then CVS where i can get okay scans
What about the above scans don't you like?
And by the way you do sound like a much smarterchild than alphanikonrex!
Just kidding alpha! :^)
NikoDoby said:
Most labs offer digital scans don't they? I don't think I know of one that doesn't offer the service. In fact even Walmart will develop your film and instead of prints you can ask for a cd with the images instead. I have a friend who does all of his medium format through walmart and never gets prints, just a cd.If you want to do it yourself a dedicated film scanner is best. Nikon makes a pretty good one but it's freakin' expensive! But you can fine tune the results better than a "cheap" lab can.
I didnt know walmart was able to scan medium format. I always just get CD only at CVS or my local store. My local store can ONLY develop medium format but never scans them. It takes them 3+ weeks to send it out and have it scanned at their headquaters.
Niko- The first scan is decent. I can live with it. But i feel like i can get a MUCH better higher resolution scan then a 1mb file from CVS and 30kb file from a pro photo lab. The bottoms resolution is horriable if i force it up to 8x10. let alone 4x6. The size it came in is 800x630
Willis- NCPS is exactly what im looking for. Its a little bit more then i would hope but i guess ill just have to choose carefully what i want to get high resolution scanned
Jonnyapple- True, i actually looked at the file again. it wasnt what i said. it was worse. 630x 430.
i feel like im posting TOO many posts on this. but everytime i post a reply. Somthing else pops up haha
Now you see why I said to start a new thread :^)
I didn't know Walmart did medium format either until very recently. However they still do send it out. I think the turn around is about a week. Not sure if he's just not too picky but he's happy with the results.
630x 430 scans seem like their intended for email only. I know my local lab has a choice of scans for email or high resolution. Perhaps since you don't specify they just assume you want scans for email. After all you do have the original negative so high resolution scans aren't really that important unless you do highres digital prints too.
Smarterchild...
There are many places that will offer scanning of your negatives, the primary criteria that will determine where you should go are the quality you want and how much you want to spend. A high quality drum-scan of a 4x5 neg can cost you more than $40 per image! Professional labs will charge by the size of the file you want back (basically the resolution of the scan). If you want more than an 8-bit file, expect to pay a lot.
The two labs I use in Los Angeles are Icon (www.iconla.com) and A&I (www.aandi.com). Neither has "wowed" me with their prices, so I would consider looking around some more. As someone else pointed out, Ken Rockwell swears by NCPS, so they might be worth a shot. Also there are surely some good labs in NY, though I'm not too sure what they are, but I would try to find out who people are going to out there. For cheaper scans I'm sure there must be some online services, I'm just unaware of who they are or what the quality of their work is.
I myself am trying to find a good online scanning service for scanning large volumes of negatives and/or prints at a reasonable price. For me, price is much more important than quality (I just want to digitally preserve some family photos), since I have so much to scan. I'm really not sure where to go for this type of service, so if anybody knows of anything, please let me know (:
"High Res" at a lab or drug store is usually a joke unless you're dealing with some place like CRC, ColorEdge, Duggal, or another really great pro lab. By "a joke" I mean they consider high res to be 1280*x or something of the sort. My medium format 6x7 scans off the V700 come in at around 12000x14000 at a decent DPI. With a film like Ilford Pan F+ or Efke R25, There's plenty of detail to be resolved at dimensions that large, the scanner doesn't even pick all of it up. If that isn't enough, you'll need a Hasselblad Imacon or a drum scan.
Costco also scans your negatives. Haven't tried it yet...
Thank you for all of your inputs for websites. I will have to look up those two you suggested Brandon.
I can have 35mm rolls scanned on a high-resolution drum scanner at my service bureau for $35/roll. But, I want to shoot, process and scan my own Tri-X. What's the best film/slide scanner on the market? Nikon recently discontinued theirs and reportedly never released a driver that properly supported OS X. What do we buy now?
Okay, just checked B+H's site. Since Nikon is apparently out of the game, I'm looking at a $419 Plustek OpticFilm 7600 Ai. With a dynamic range specification of 3.5, a hardware resolution of 7600 x 7600 dpi, and a 48-bit color depth, it seems pretty good. There's no slide feeder, but I'm only doing Tri-X negative strips anyway.
I have been using a Minolta Dimage Dual IV, but could not upgrade my LaserSoft to Win7 64bit. I bought a Plustek 7600 and love it. Only problem was the LaserSoft software that came with it had already been registered to someone else (!!) and it took a while to get a valid license number. (I was able to use LaseSoft right away, but could not upgrade to the latest version.) Scans are much better than the Minolta.
warprints said:
I have been using a Minolta Dimage Dual IV, but could not upgrade my LaserSoft to Win7 64bit. I bought a Plustek 7600 and love it. Only problem was the LaserSoft software that came with it had already been registered to someone else (!!) and it took a while to get a valid license number. (I was able to use LaseSoft right away, but could not upgrade to the latest version.) Scans are much better than the Minolta.
Really! That's great to hear! Thanks!!! Isn't it funny how poorly supported these products are, and how quickly manufacturers have seemed to run away from this product category entirely? It's just like dye-sub printers. Nobody wants to make large-format, dye-subs anymore. The Kodak was awesome, and only like $600. Now . . . gone!
One thing I do miss, but only a little, with the Plustek is that the Plustek is manual feed only. With the Minolta you can feed in the slide or film holder, and it will automatically scan all the images in the holder. With the Plustek, you have to manually feed the holder to move to the next image. (Doesn't seem like a big deal, except if your scans last several minutes, and you can have the machine do them on its own, you can go off an do something else for a while.) Lasersoft (Silverfast) is really good. Lots of stuff to learn to get is just right, though.
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