Scanning Quality

I am just learning a little about scanning negatives and slides (I'm

very much a "beginner") and have some very basic questions. I am

trying to get an overall "feel" for the various qualities of home

scanners versus commercial lab processing, including:

1. What are the various levels of quality available from commercial

labs? I've seen wildly varying prices for prints from 35 mm slides. I

also feel like sometimes I get inconistent quality from the labs that

I feel is not necessarily due to me (although I take a lot of bad

pictures!), or it could be from the film.

2. How do the flatbed scanners (say an Epson) and film scanners (like

a Nikon Coolspan 8000) fit in?

3. And finally, how does all this compare to the pre-digital age

processing?

I am looking mainly at 8x10 or 11x17 enlargements from either 35mm

slides or 120 transparencies (I just got a used Bronica a few months

ago). I know this is a lot of info to ask for, but I've been really

impressed with the posts I've seen in this forum and thought I'd throw

out the question.

Thanks!

Film scanners produce much better results than flatbeds when you scan film.

Prices of scans from commercial labs vary greatly in price and quality. Quality of traditional enlargements from color or black and white negatives is generally excellent if you select a good lab. However, you will have not so much control over the end result, unless you get to talk to the printer and he or she is in the mood for a conversation. Quality of traditional enlargements from color slides is generally poor.

With digital techniques, you can scan the slide or negative, and adjust it yourself, and print it at home. This in my experience produces the best quality print as long as you can afford the equipment to do so.

I would recommend you to 1) find a very good pro lab, try some negatives printed conventionally by them, and you can also try having them make scans and prints from slides. I don't think it is worth the hassle to have a lab scan a negative and make a print using a digital printer, but from slides, digital is the only good widely available method. Generally, film scanners tend to be optimized for slides, but there are also scanners that produce good results from negatives.

If you determine that you want better results and or more control than the pro lab gives you, or you don't want to wait to get your prints, you can buy the latest Epson Photo inkjet (e.g. R1800 or 2400) and a decent film scanner. I would not get the 8000 for a number of reasons, however, the 9000 is reportedly excellent (and I have experience with their 35 mm format sisters, the 2000, 4000 and 5000, and the 5000 is by far the best of them). With some practice, you can probably get better results from that scanner than you can by having a lab do the scanning, unless you're willing to pay $30 or more for a single scan.

Scanning takes a lot of time to learn to do well. Be patient, eventually you will get there.