Where to get 35mm film digitized cheap but good quality

[henry_minsky1]

I mostly use a Canon 20D now but still like to take pictures with my

35mm film cameras, but I am not particularly interested in getting

prints. I would like my negatives digitized with good quality when

they are developed.

 

Can anyone recommend a mail order place that develops and scans 35mm

film (and slides) with good quality and is low cost?

 

I sometimes want some high quality prints later from the digital

scans, or possibly from the negatives, but what I really want is the

high quality scanning right when the film is processed.

[nolan]

http://www.digitalslides.net

 

He delivers excellent slide scans (from a Nikon 5000) for very reasonable prices. I've had

several hundred items scanned there and delivered on DVD to my specs (16-bit color,

AdobeRGB space, full resolution). Highly recommended.

[kelly_flanigan1]

I appears the link above just scans; and doesnt develop film. Thus is abit another step needed. Here the local c41 labs charge 99 cents for a CD with scans; when one gets prints. Then I scan only the better ones myself with our 4000dpi canon unit. The c41 labs lower res output is decent enough for small prints; finding focus errors; color shifts etc. It saves alot of my time; and is a decent contact sheet for all time and web usage too.

[kelly_flanigan1]

What is defined as "good quality" varies with each person and the era. Once drum scans were at 600 lines per inch feed per drum rev. And "super high quality" was a 2000 lines per inch drum scan; that cost 2 dollars per meg of scan. Thus long ago a 35mm slide was say 17megs; or 34 bucks each per scan; or 34x36= 1224 dollars to drum scan an entire 36 exposure roll.

[henry_minsky1]

I define good quality as comparable to the images I get from the 20D, i.e, around 6-8 megapixels, some lossless format like photocd would be good but JPG is acceptable if it is comparable parameters to what the 20D does in fine mode.

[jack_fisher1]

"Cheap but good quality" "Cheap is not good quality; and good quality is not cheap"

 

If you are lucky, you get what you pay for.

 

JF

[bill_tuthill]

Although some Noritsu QSS labs produce good 6 Mp (or higher) scans,

I know of none in my area that do. For my money the Agfa d-Lab

produces the best quality/price tradeoff, under $8 per roll for

3000x2000 pixels scans. Fuji Frontier labs charge about half that

for 1800x1200 scans, but quality is nowhere near as good.

[peter_cofran]

most local consumer labs scan around 1544 x 1024, which is good enough to do 4x6 and 5x7 prints. Like someone said scan the roll low res to save you time then rescan only the best images you want enlarge. No one does quality drum scans on the cheap.

[ilkka_nissila]

My opinion is that color film development is best done by a professional lab, but scanning is best done by the user/photographer. It requires user input.

 

I for color negative scanning, I can heartily recommend the Nikon LS-5000. You can just feed in the negative strips (or the whole roll with an accessory) and scan away. The scanner is fast, takes care of most dust without deteriorating the image quality too much, and the resulting files are sufficiently good for any application. It's a dramatic improvement from scanning negs with the previous LS-4000 model.

[paul beiser]

http://www.ltlimagery.com/

 

I have used this service a lot and could not be happier, they work with you to produce what you need/want. Once I had a slide with a severe overexposure, and they spent extra time getting all the detail they could out of the slide (for no additional charge!) and I was stunned at the work that was done.

 

High highly recommended, and reasonably priced. I shoot all digital these days, but occasionally go back through past work and look for "keepers" to have scanned.

[peter_cofran]

"I for color negative scanning, I can heartily recommend the Nikon LS-5000. You can just feed in the negative strips (or the whole roll with an accessory) and scan away."

 

Sounds like a great scanner. I have to suffer with polaroid sprint 2000 and it is a pain in the ass loading negatives into holders and i always get dust on them matter how careful i am.

 

If this guy is complaining about the price of scans i doubt he'll drop 1k on a film scanner.

[henry_minsky1]

I own the Minolta DImage Dual Scan IV, I got it to scan in a bunch of old negatives which were taken with point and shoot cameras, so it was of sufficient quality for that.

 

But the film I shoot now is on Pentax Super ME 35mm with the 50mm/1.4 lens, and I find the quality of the Minolta scanner isn't quite what I need, and I would rather have whole rolls scanned when I get things developed.

[ilkka_nissila]

I'd like to add that the film flatness problems of the LS-4000 are much reduced in the LS-5000. It is like the depth of field had been increased. The whole frame area shows the gain sharply, which could only be achieved using glass mounts on the LS-4000. Also, the automatic film strip feeder seems to hold the film very flat (to within 1-2 focusing steps). Overall, the improvements are considerable and I am quite happy with the purchase although I meditated on it quite long.

 

Yes, $1k is a lot of money but if you have many scans to make, or you want the control over the end results (best possible print), you need some sort of investment. I'd hate to be dependent on labs for scans.

[tony_crowley___fort_worth_]

Have a look here if you have a Costco near you:

 

<a href="http://www.photo.net/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=009VYr"</a>

[tony_crowley___fort_worth_]

forgot the link:

 

http://www.photo.net/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=009VYr

[User_1577653]

Henry,

 

This is probably a long shot for you, but even if it doesn't work out it might give you another route to consider: Mike's Camera is a shop in my area (Denver/Boulder) which has an online service available. What I do is bring in my film which they develop and scan, uploading the images to my online account. For $4/roll you get the "standard" resolution (something like 1500 x 1000 pixels), but for $6/roll you get a "high res" upload, which is 3000 x 2000 pixels. I think the online service is basically free if you don't want to store images there long-term. But there is a yearly fee of $20 if you want to be able to download at full resolution. That's the route I took - basically $20/yr plus $6/roll for 6-Mpxl scans. That's a decent price if you are happy with the service. Now, could you mail your film to them and make use of this service? I don't know. But I could send you a link if you wanted to consider it, or maybe you can find a shop in your area with a similar service.

 

I should add that I have a dedicated film scanner now - a Canoscan FS4000. With it I can typically do better than the service from Mike's Camera, albeit with a lot of extra work. In particular I get more of the image since I crop manually, and can avoid the blown highlights that Mike's sometimes generates. Nowadays I am pretty much using this service just to get a preview of my images, so I can determine which ones I want to scan myself. You might wonder why I bother with the online service at all now that I have the scanner. Well the main reason is that the FS4000 is so dang SLOW! Scanning ALL my negatives and doing the required amount of processing just to figure out which are keepers and which aren't takes a LOOOOOOONG time!

[User_1577653]

Oops, I meant to say that the high-res download option is $16/year. A "membership" is $20/yr.

[bjmarkowitz]

A&I (www.aandi.com), they will develope and scan. 5-6MB Tiffs are standard, but Higher quality is available for extra money. I never asked how because I was satisfied with the 5-6MB Tiffs.

[joyce_geddings]

Clark color labs,I love there work, 27 35 mm roll is $4.29 total,you get free mailers,credit for unprintables or really bad pics, can have them put online for 99 cents per roll and most time you get coupon to do it free. can get glossy or matte.you get email letting you know they got your oder & email when it is shipped back to you. I have used wal-mart /target, other mail order places but always go back to Clark Photo<div></div>