david_sullivan3

It's still slower than advertised, and I think price went up a bit in last month or so, but my experience with ScanCafe was good. Interestingly, I compared scanned negatives that they did for 19 cents with scans of same negatives done locally -- I believe by our excellent professional photo place in DC, Chrome, for about $5. First take: from a distance the local scans looked much better - colors brighter & less muddy-looking. Second take: the ScanCafe scans had far more detail, the local scans pumped up the brightness of colors and washed out the details. I could easily do the same to the ScanCafe scans with Photoshop.

I could upload examples if people really want to see.

I had a similar problem last week - accidentally deleted about 200 pix from an SD card, possibly because of

letting a 6 year old kid play with our Canon camera - not sure whether someone hit "delete all" or "format," but

all photos were gone. First step was to take the card out of the camera and stop taking new photos over the lost

ones. I was fortunate that this was a brand-new card. I switched the card's write-protect tab to avoid writing

anything as well. Last night I tried about six freeware undelete programs which did not work, then one pay

program (Undelete SD Card) which promised to work (the free trial version showed 190 files recoverable) but it

only brought back thumbnails, not viewable versions of the jpg files. Then I found a free program called PC

Inspector Smart Recovery, and it did the trick. It seems great, and I recommend it. And I don't work for them,

know them, etc. - though I will send them a few bucks under their pay-what-you-want-for-this program.

I would like to digitize several thousand 10- to 25-year old negatives, a job with a degree of urgency measured in months or years. ScanCafe seemed right for that so I decided to try it.

I sent a small test order (about 100 negs) to ScanCafe just before Christmas.

After a few status update e-mails (received, processing, etc.), I received this January 15 email:

***

I am writing today to provide you with an update on your ScanCafe Order including a new estimated online date for Order #XXXXXXX.

In December, ScanCafe was the recipient of phenomenal editorial reviews in Money Magazine, Popular Photography, as well as other publications. Although great news for us, this significantly increased demand for our services during the holiday season. Although these were very welcome reviews, they were for the most part unexpected and have created a backlog in our scanning process. Therefore, we have moved your online date back.

Your new online date estimate for Order #XXXXXXX is February 18, 2008.

We are sorry for the delay but our goal is to provide the highest quality scans so we can not take short-cuts to get your order completed more quickly. We know you will appreciate this in the end, and we greatly appreciate your patience and understanding in this matter.

We will be increasing our capacity and hope to reduce this turn around time as best as we can. Please don't hesitate to contact us with questions at [. . .]

* * *

2 notes:

1. Be warned about this delay. Delay per se is no problem for me, but may not be for you.

2. I am hoping this is in fact a general problem for them, and not any problem specific to my order. Have others received similar messages?

Thanks.