also returning to film photography - scan question

After a 2 year hiatus from film...I decided to take a film camera

along on a family trip last week. I didn't want to drag my Nikon,

flashe and lenses along with all my other gear, so I purchased a

Leica Minilux for the trip. wow!

 

The prints (made at Adolph Gassers in SF) are beautiful. I used

Kodak Portra 160 VC (I wanted Fuji Superia 100, but they were out

the week I was preparing to leave).

 

Now for the question...I asked them to scan the negatives and create

a CD at the same time...which they did. The results are

disappointing. Why is it that the scans don't look as good as the

images from my Sony 3.2 MP digital? Nor do they look as good as the

prints the lab made! (by this I mean they aren't as sharp...the

colors aren't on either, but I guess I will have to do some

manipulation with Adobe to correct that)

 

I had been seriously thinking about picking up an older Nikon

Coolscan to support the use of film...but I would have expected the

images that the lab made to be at least as good as what I could get

from a scanner...and at least that they would be better than my

little sony.

 

Thoughts?

What resolution were the scans made at? I know that a lot of Frontier scans come at 72dpi by default - you have to ask for higher res (and pay a little more)

Some photo CD's made by processors simply are not worth the price due to quality of scans or file sizes too small.

 

I have gone back to shooting quite a bit of film after 4 months of shooting nothing but digital with my Digital Rebel. I still don't like prints made by most labs so I've started taking a hybrid approach to film shooting and I find I am much more pleased with the results.

 

I now take my film to Walmart and have it processed and get an index print, but NO individual prints. Cost- $2.97 for a 36 exposure roll. I go home and pick out the 10-15 images (most cases) on the roll I'd like printed and I scan them myself on my Canoscan FS4000US film scanner. I can then either print them myself at home or I can burn a CD, take them back to Walmart and, using the kiosk, make real prints I know will be good. Whether I shoot digitally or with film I wind up with digital images to work with, email and enjoy plus I have negatives that someday may be able to be re-scanned on much better equipment.

 

I have to say if I get 15 really good pictures out of 36 I am probably doing better than I am doing with my Digital Rebel. So far I'm up to over 8,000 clicks with it but so many of those are just me playing with the darn thing. I'd probably be hard pressed to find 3,000 original digital files I wanted to keep bad enough that I either saved them on my hard drives or burned them onto CD's.

You are probably right. I just assumed that I would get high res scans for the price they charged! $15.95 for the first role, $6.95 for each thereafter.

I can't tell for sure what the resolution is...but the files are mostly half the size of images from my 3.2 mp sony...(ie, these are mostly 600-800k, with an occasional 1 mb file)

 

john

John,

 

If you're getting 600-800k scans, I'd guess you're only getting scans at 72dpi. I get my basic scans (mostly slide film these days) done on a Frontier at 300dpi for about an extra $1 per roll - from that, anything I want to print, I re-scan at a higher res.

 

Prices may be different in SF (I'm in Taiwan), but it shouldn't be a huge jump in cost to get a decent enough scan for web use, or to help you decide which ones to print.

 

Of course, a film scanner is going to be the best solution - but how many do you want to print or rework in PS? For basic proofing purposes, or email/internet use, basic lab scans may be good enough for you.

well...at the price from this lab, the cost for a used scanner would be recouped pretty quickly. I also intended to use it to scan old slides from my dad dating back to the late 50's and 60's...it all comes down to time and money at some point.

 

Anyway, thanks for the feedback. I'm going to ask the lab about higher res scans and the cost.

I just got off the phone with the lab and they indicated that the large files on my cd are scanned at 400 dpi at 3000 by 2000 resolution, but saved in jpg format at 4x compression (I hope I didn't screw that up). I'm going to go there and take a look on their screen just to verify that it isn't my system that has issues.

Does Gasser's use a Frontier? The scans I got from a Frontier this

week were only 1800x1200, but I was expecting 1536x1024. I'm still

trying to decide why Frontier scans look so bad (whether from oversharpening, patterning, or what). Do the Agfa dlab7 or Noritsu

digilab make better scans?

John, don't go on an important trip with just that Minilux ever again. They were made by Panasonic and are notorious for sudden death. The shutters die, and Leica will try to soak you for $350 to fix it.

We run a Frontier at work, and I have noticed a few things regarding scan quality. The 'base' scan is 1200x1800 (300dpi - 4x6). The machine can make scans all the way up to 3000x4500 (300dpi - 10x15), but as the file size made goes up,the scan speed goes WAY down. It may take as long as 15 minutes to scan a roll at full 3000x4500 resolution.

 

With that being said, I have also noticed that if we make scans with all the default Frontier 'goodies' turned on, the scans really look bad... unsharp, blocky, grainy, and really noisy. These features include Hyper-Tone, Hyper-sharpness, boosted contrast, etc. However, we have set up a special scanning profile, or condition, for pure scanning. This condition turns off all the on-board enhancements on the Frontier. The scans from this condition are excellent and smooth at all sizes.

 

This condition can only be set up by someone with a high enough password to do it, and from what I have seen most lab managers just don't understand the process. For some reason the software that allows the Frontier to make great prints from film also hurts the pure scanning ability of the machine.

 

Maybe you can find a lab that will scan your film without any manipulation by the Frontier, then make an evaluation. Our Frontier, when setup in the pure scanning condition, makes much better scans than our Nikon scanner.

 

Hope this helps!

 

-Dave

just got back from my visit to the lab...they are very nice and extremely helpful.

Turns out...the scan is 400 dpi at 3000 x 2000 (or 5x7). When you look at the image information in photoshop, it says the size would be 17 mb (does jpg compression really do all that? 17mb --> 800k?). (their printer/scanner is an AGFA)They also have a high end 'drum scanner' for specialized work.

 

She played with the images while I was there...and they looked pretty good after toning down the saturation. Turns out that the prints were made with some changes...I'm going to play with them at home and see how they come out.

I had similar problems with labs, I can say that America has lost its pride and if you want it done right you have to do it your self.

The automatic machines that process your film to print do automatic adjustments that can make or break a really great image.

The scans are only as good as the people that scan them.

I think that labs today try everything to save a buck at your expense. Using over used chemicals and giving your less than desirable results.

I have taken that responsibility away from them, by processing my images at home. The results are Shockley bright, colorful and sharp. More so than I have ever seen at a lab.

I sell my images so this is a must, I have never been so thrilled with my images.

I would get a good scanner. Money talks, so look around. I think Canon has master scanners.

Also invest in some books by Katrin Eismann. She is a wonderful adobe shop artist that really knows her stuff. You can fix any image with a little knowledge of adobe. Her web site is www.digitalretouch.org you can become a master in no time and never need to depend on a lab for poor service again. Your images are much too important for that.

Good luck<div></div>

Jay, thanks for the warning...I didn't notice your post earlier re: the reliability of the Minilux. I have read about that in various places before. I don't know how common the problem is, but did note that there are many people who love the camera and have used them trouble free for many years... As a person who has had several Nikon SLRs both early 80's and late 90's models stop working at inopportune times, I am aware it can happen with just about any camera.

 

btw, current pricing is said to be in the $200 range for shutter replacement...