35mm Film scanning

Does anybody know of a good and inexpensive place in Houston Texas

that can scan my 35mm slides and put them on CD?

I found a couple of places already but are a bit expensive $5.00 just

for the CD that will be used, and around $1.00 per scan, that can add

up pretty fast.

Thanks for your input!

 

Danny

For most purposes the best idea would be to invest in a slide scanner. These devices cost about US$300 - 1000, maybe some nowadays even less, especially on ebay. I have an Minolta Elitescan II (unfortunately not with USB/Firewire), bought for EUR 450 via Ebay (new), and I am quite satisfied with it. Okay, you additionally need a PC, which you have anyway, since otherwise you wouldn't be asking about scanning. Some of the newer ones can even do bulk scanning, they look like a slide projector. If a density of about 4-4.8 and a resolution of 2880 - 4800 dpi are enough, home scanning would be fine.

 

presumably the professional scanners get more out of your image, but you pay for it. But you would proably not want to scan your whole collection that way.

 

The bottom line is:

a few scans: find the cheapest place you can get (it won't be much chaeper than what you stated), and let them scan it.

many scans: buy a scanner

many scans, ultra high quality (i.e. 7200 dpi, D=5+): Either sell your house, car, etc. or wait for one of the next generations of slide scanners

A buddy of mine shopped extensively for this kind of service here in Washington, DC and didn't turn up anything affordable (unless your film wasn't cut/mounted etc.).

 

I've got a little Nikon Coolscan V that I'm getting the hang of after a few months. It can be a pretty time consuming process.

I've dealt with this issue for a while now, and the answer I've come up with is a bit surprising. There are a couple of "serious" camera shops here in Baton Rouge; all charge around 2 or 3 dollars a scan. One day at the local Sam's Club, I noticed that they had a Fuji Frontier 370 mini-lab. Most people don't realize this, but the 370 has a built in slide/negative scanner which (if I recall correctly)does a 3000 dpi scan. I'm sure a lot depends on the people behind the counter, but I've been very pleased with my Velvia scans. Our particular store charges about 39 cents a scan and a couple dollars to save the whole batch to a CD. It's by far the best deal if you're lucky enough to live near one with such services. Unfortunately, not all Sam's Clubs offer this (yet).

... Frontier operators often scan your negs at a measly 1.5mpixels; it all depends on your target size.

It all depends from the store policy. Here in Montreal a 6Mpixel scan from a Noritsu machine costs 1 CAN$ (0.73 US$) per frame.

I whole roll (negative film) development + scan (included CD) is circa 20 CAN$ (high res 6MP) or 10 $ (circa 1.5 MP). Tax icluded.

The problem is that I obtained good results with 100 - 200 ISO negative film (Fuji Reala - Superia) and noisy scan with 400 ISO (Kodak 400 VC). Good results also with slides except a very dense frame of Velvia 100F. With this service and price I'm not printing anymore a complete roll of negative. I just ask the low res CD and after I enlarge the few worth it. I hope that this option wil become more and more available.