pfbz Posted December 21, 2007 Share #1 Posted December 21, 2007 Advertisement (gone after registration) My M6 has sat looking beautiful but sadly neglected on a shelf for several years, second fiddle to Canon DSLR's. I'm going to be doing some international travel, and would really love the handling, wonderful image quality, & stealth of my M6, but really don't want to go back to boxes of slides. Is there a high-quality, cost-effective way to go directly from negative or slide film to hi-res digital scans? I know any corner drugstore will give you CD's with your film back, but I have no idea what to expect out of these services. What are the best options for getting high-quality, low-cost digital images back from my M6? Or will the processing cost just pay for an M8 in short order?? Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Advertisement Posted December 21, 2007 Posted December 21, 2007 Hi pfbz, Take a look here Direct to digital processing? Cost & Quality?. I'm sure you'll find what you were looking for!
earleygallery Posted December 21, 2007 Share #2 Posted December 21, 2007 Give it a try before making any decisions. The sort of photo CD's you get from the typical 1hr labs are usually low res, fine for web use and small print sizes. I tend to have my films processed and scanned only - using the CD as 'proofs' and I then re-scan any particular images I want to work with to print large. You will need to find a pro lab in order to have high res scans - I've tried this as well but of course it works out more expensive (but worth it if you don't want the bother of scanning yourself). Find a lab near you that offers a process/hi res scan package service and see how you find the results. The great thing is you still have the original slide/neg to work from as well. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
ndjambrose Posted December 21, 2007 Share #3 Posted December 21, 2007 My M6 has sat looking beautiful but sadly neglected on a shelf for several years, second fiddle to Canon DSLR's. I'm going to be doing some international travel, and would really love the handling, wonderful image quality, & stealth of my M6, but really don't want to go back to boxes of slides. Is there a high-quality, cost-effective way to go directly from negative or slide film to hi-res digital scans? I know any corner drugstore will give you CD's with your film back, but I have no idea what to expect out of these services. What are the best options for getting high-quality, low-cost digital images back from my M6? Or will the processing cost just pay for an M8 in short order?? Depends what you define as high quality or low cost. A drug store will give you 220dpi 8 bit scans at 6x4 inches, for a file roughly 2.2 Mb in size. This is what you get if you order a CD of scans. In the UK it's around £9.00 for process and scan of 36 exposures. It's cheap but quality is pretty poor. I don't find them acceptable for anything other than making a digital contact sheet, although it's useful if you're using places without optical facilities that couldn't otherwise produce a contact sheet. If you want professional drum scans these will be at about 4000 dpi, 16 bit, dust spotted, colour corrected and retouched, and in the region of 130 Mb file. The quality will be as good as it gets, but will set you back around £40 per single scan at a pro lab. Most people who want high quality at low cost buy a decent film scanner and do it themselves. Probably 80% of the quality of a drum scan, at a tiny fraction of the cost. Or you could get an M8, which would pay for itself very quickly if you would otherwise buy a lot of processing and scanning. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
giordano Posted December 21, 2007 Share #4 Posted December 21, 2007 Find a lab near you that offers a process/hi res scan package service and see how you find the results. The great thing is you still have the original slide/neg to work from as well. IME you need to enquire very carefully about what you'll get. Last summer I sent the first roll from my 'new' IIIg to a pro lab in Brighton whose website advertises "a range of state-of-the-art scanning services" including scans from rolls of film in "three file sizes: low - 4.5mb; medium - 14.5mb; high - 25mb", asking for the 25MB. What came back was an ordinary Fujifilm CD, with the "hi-res" JPEGs in the range 1 to 2MB. When I phoned to complain they said that these were high-resolution files (true-ish, 3367 x 2432 pixels) and that uncompressed they'd be 25MB (true). But I couldn't get the person on the phone to admit that compressing them by more than 90% had made any difference to the image quality. The manager wasn't available at the time and never phoned me back, so I assume they don't want business. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
abrewer Posted December 21, 2007 Share #5 Posted December 21, 2007 I just have one suggestion for you to try: Shoot a roll of Fuji Reala, take it to photo lab with a Fuji Frontier processor (Cord Camera here in Indy is my usual choice) and ask them for their "high-rez" CD. I think you'll be happy, and you can shoot a lot of images at $12 a disc before you reach the stratospheric cost of a new M8 and kit. Thanks. Allan Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
ndjambrose Posted December 21, 2007 Share #6 Posted December 21, 2007 ... a pro lab in Brighton whose website advertises "a range of state-of-the-art scanning services" including scans from rolls of film in "three file sizes: low - 4.5mb; medium - 14.5mb; high - 25mb".... A 'decent pro lab' would be out of business if it offered high res scans of 25Mb - let alone 4 Mb. Most pro scans tend to work out as an absolute minimum of 60 Mb - this is what you get from a 16 bit 3000 dpi scan. Anything less than that just isn't worth the time. The top of the line scans from my lab are about 300 Mb files. And no pro lab would ever offer JPG images. No one wants to pay for a quality scan and then get it saved in a lossy file format. Mine always come as uncompressed TIFFs. You're quite right to vote with your feet, as this lab is offering consumer grade services. I only hope you were offered consumer grade pricing to match. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
giordano Posted December 21, 2007 Share #7 Posted December 21, 2007 Advertisement (gone after registration) A 'decent pro lab' would be out of business if it offered high res scans of 25Mb - let alone 4 Mb. Most pro scans tend to work out as an absolute minimum of 60 Mb - this is what you get from a 16 bit 3000 dpi scan. Anything less than that just isn't worth the time. The top of the line scans from my lab are about 300 Mb files. And no pro lab would ever offer JPG images. No one wants to pay for a quality scan and then get it saved in a lossy file format. Mine always come as uncompressed TIFFs. You're quite right to vote with your feet, as this lab is offering consumer grade services. I only hope you were offered consumer grade pricing to match. I can't remember just what I paid. It was much more than the £5 or so that a 1-hour minilab charges for a similar CD (though with slide film that's not an option), but less than a single "real" high-resolution scan (which this place in Brighton also offers: 55-100MB 'repro quality scans' at £26.50 each). What I'd like to find is a service that will take a occasional roll of E6 and scan it into decent TIFFs at a sensible price. 'Decent' means as good as my old Coolscan III or a bit better. Any suggestions? Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shootist Posted December 22, 2007 Share #8 Posted December 22, 2007 I have one suggestion. BUY a good scanner. The 2 time I had a lab, a good lab at that, scan negatives they were terrible, totally unusable. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
budrichard Posted December 25, 2007 Share #9 Posted December 25, 2007 Dwaynes' Photo in Kansas offers Photo CD for $4USD/roll at 6.5Meg. I have found the quality very good and the files usable for most applications. Dwayne's is the last lab processing Kodachrome film.-Dick Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
harrisfoto Posted December 28, 2007 Share #10 Posted December 28, 2007 I use a DSLR (Leica R8+DMR) a bellows, a copy stand, an old illumitron slide copier (e-bay for $150), and an 70 mm enlarging lens to make digital copies of slides and negatives. I then process the digital copies in BibblePro (for negatives I reverse the curve). The process goes very fast. Results of the process are the first two black & white building photos here: Stephen Harris Archive This lets you get the best of both cameras w/o buying a scanner. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
StS Posted December 29, 2007 Share #11 Posted December 29, 2007 I'm afraid it is not possible to give general advice here. Most of the minilabs use high quality professional scanners for their prints. One could only object against their quite aggressive 'sharpening' of their scans. Sometimes they even make film scans look 'digital' which is not what every film user is looking for. If it is possible to get, a 'Base16' (16 times the resolution of a standard scan) of the current Fuji minilab will be a good starting point. However, the lab people are reluctant to do this. Firstly, not everyone in the lab is trained to use the machine in more than the standard mode. Secondly a single high quality scan is blocking the expensive machine for several minutes. In Hamburg I pay 20 Euros for a C41 development plus Base16 scan. My advice would be to find a good minilab being run by people who put some pride in their work. It will be helpful to have the scan done without time pressure, if the lab has some days to do the job, they can do it if the machine load is low. Secondly it helps to build a relationship to the lab people, it turned out the ladies in my old lab could be bribed with some sweets. But even then I was not able to convince anyone to switch the sharpening off (nobody knew how to do it and wanted to use the expensive machine in an untried way)..... Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
phovsho Posted December 30, 2007 Share #12 Posted December 30, 2007 What is the scanner to get for the pro-am type photographer? Any suggestions. Medium format capability would be nice, but not essential. I have an M8 but like using film cameras (M6s and MPs), but would like to be able to scan my negatives and do my own printing. Best M Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
StS Posted December 30, 2007 Share #13 Posted December 30, 2007 If you would like to scan 120/220 film, there is only one Nikon scanner left. Nikon Imaging | SUPER COOLSCAN 9000 ED About 2500 Euros over here... Then there are the Hasselblads: Monochrom When I saw their pricing, I decided a M8 is not that expensive... Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
tashley Posted January 9, 2008 Share #14 Posted January 9, 2008 IME you need to enquire very carefully about what you'll get. Last summer I sent the first roll from my 'new' IIIg to a pro lab in Brighton whose website advertises "a range of state-of-the-art scanning services" including scans from rolls of film in "three file sizes: low - 4.5mb; medium - 14.5mb; high - 25mb", asking for the 25MB. What came back was an ordinary Fujifilm CD, with the "hi-res" JPEGs in the range 1 to 2MB. When I phoned to complain they said that these were high-resolution files (true-ish, 3367 x 2432 pixels) and that uncompressed they'd be 25MB (true). But I couldn't get the person on the phone to admit that compressing them by more than 90% had made any difference to the image quality. The manager wasn't available at the time and never phoned me back, so I assume they don't want business. Hey John, A cautionary tale indeed! I live near Brighton and am about to get some 35mm film developed and scanned and would be intrigued to know which lab treated you like this. Who do you use now? Best Tim Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
johnastovall Posted January 9, 2008 Share #15 Posted January 9, 2008 Dwaynes' Photo in Kansas offers Photo CD for $4USD/roll at 6.5Meg. I have found the quality very good and the files usable for most applications.Dwayne's is the last lab processing Kodachrome film.-Dick Dwaynes's scans are jpeg. Just found that out in an email yesterday and that to me is unusable for quality prints. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
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