negative scanning...

[karl_wertanen]

<p>I am looking to have some high quality scans made of around 100 different 35mm color frames for enlarging. i'm looking to contact a few different pro labs and ask some questions before i choose which lab would serve me best. I was hoping someone w/experience with negative scanning could offer me some questions i could ask the different labs i call, and also, what to watch out for.<br /> ex: is there a point where there is too much resolution?<br /> i've seen some comments elsewhere about..... "wet scanning is the way to go"? <br /> i also know negatives have grain, and it may be hard to eliminate or just impossible to eliminate, but are there techniques that are used to reduce the reducibility of grain? <br /> just looking for some good info and some good questions to ask to help me make the best decision, so i dont walk into this process blind and come out totally disappointed...... or broke lol!<br /> any and all responses are greatly appreciated!<br /> thank you<br /> karl</p>

[karl_wertanen]

<p>lol, i meant "are there ways to reduce the noticibility of grain"</p>

[leicaglow]

<p>Karl, Well, I personally like grain. But you can reduce it using tools like Dfine and other sharpness control plugins (normally I would only use them when printing images in a very large format). Wet scanning is usually better, depending on the scanner, but it is also more time consuming, and usually not done with small format images, like 35mm. Your best scan would be from a Nikon Coolscan, unless you want to pay a lot of money to have a drum scan made, and even at that, your image quality wouldn't be a whole lot better than a newer Coolscan IV or V. For 35mm, I would just buy a scanner and do it yourself. It won't take much more time and you'll own the scanner afterwards (for about the same price).</p>

[matussik]

<p>I'm using a Nikon Super Coolscan 5000 ED (generation after the V) and I'm very happy with it. On some highly contrasted slides it has some difficulties to render the dynamic range, but then I do several scans with different brightness settings and merge them together in PS to obtain a result that is very similar to the original slide.<br>

If you have only a limited number of slides to scan at once and wouldn't have the use of an own scanner afterward's you may not want to invest in a scanner and get through the process of learning how to get the best result out of it. If your looking for the top some labs offer scanning with Imacon scanner which are among the best in the market but are also very expensive: I have a lab in my area that offers raw scan on a Imacon flextight 848 for 25,-EUR per scan... I haven't tested it yet (I will soon though) but considering that there is a factor 10 in the value of the scanner and it has a scanning resolution of 8.000dpi while mine has 4.000dpi, I believe the Nikon will not sustain the comparison.</p>