Best place for scanning film to digital

amdgilmore

Just got a test roll developed in a fuji shop and I'm pretty disappointed by the quality of the digital scan.

See here:


Zenit-E test roll by Andrew M Gilmore, on Flickr

There's a lot of detail missing here, especially around the little girl (she was pulling a face at me as she cycled past).

The file sizes were pretty tiny too (~500kb) which doesn't leave you with much image quality to spare if you need to edit them in Lightroom.

Can anybody recommend a lab in Dublin that will do a better job? Preferably high-quality PNGs and preferably not too expensive - I have lots of rolls waiting to be developed and I don't want to spend a fortune every time.

Thanks.

chisel

I don't think there's any cost effective solution other than scanning it yourself....

Epson V500 on komplett for 160 or a plustek 7600i if you can find one.

magicbastarder

or else go to somewhere like rua red and use their scanners.

Leftyflip

If you don't mind my asking, where did you take that photo?

Effects

It's on the corner as you cross over the Liffey going southside at the Matt Talbot bridge.

amdgilmore

Thanks for the tips. I'm not really willing to invest in a scanner at this point, but I'll keep the brands in mind.

And I've been meaning to visit that Rua Red place anyway so maybe I'll kill two birds with one stone.

Still open to lab recommendations though. If you know of a decent one please let me know.



@leftyflip Yep, just beside Ulster Bank on George's Quay. The other side, facing the quays, reads 'Prison'. I'm told it was once an arts centre of some sort.

It's actually a pretty striking building, in an urban-decay sort of way. I don't care much for the photo below, which is why I never uploaded it before, but it gives you a slightly better view:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/amdgilmore/7578773618/

cnocbui

Do you have a DSLR and a macro lens?

amdgilmore

As a matter of fact... I do.

And I've heard of that technique. Does it produce usable results though?

Effects

amdgilmore wrote: »

@leftyflip Yep, just beside Ulster Bank on George's Quay. The other side, facing the quays, reads 'Prison'. I'm told it was once an arts centre of some sort.

It's by Ben Eine. His work went up in value after the British PM gave a piece to Obama as a present. I still prefer his earlier train work though.

cnocbui

amdgilmore wrote: »

As a matter of fact... I do.

And I've heard of that technique. Does it produce usable results though?

Sure does. I had a Polaroid Sprintscan 4000 film scanner which produced superb results, given it was 4000 dpi and had a decent dynamic range.

Unfortunately it died. I recently bought an Olympus M4/3 camera and the kit lens had a very competent macro function.

I found it could focus on a slide full frame, so I made this:







Very crude, I'll admit, but it woks a treat. The plastic cap can be slid backwards and forwards to get the point where the slide fills the frame in width. The slight protrusion of foam past that point serves to grip the slide corners well. A couple of slits and it could do film strips as well.

Obviously exact mechanical registration isn't going to happen but it is very easy to fiddle the tube so the slide is framed properly and a small aperture takes care of the rest.

A white sheet of paper in the sun, a small aperture, aim and very rapid slide scanning!

Here is an example:



A 100% crop:

BostonB

Very clever.

magicbastarder

would be interested to see a side by side comparison with a shot you scanned on the polaroid too.

BostonB

In the past I've got some slide and also regular 35mm negatives scanned in shops with less than impressive results, lots of grain in the scan being the main issue. Sometime I think I get better results from photographing the photo! But the problem with that its very time consuming to set it up, and you can't batch them easily. My main use would be archiving or repairing family photos that kinda thing.

cnocbui

magicbastarder wrote: »

would be interested to see a side by side comparison with a shot you scanned on the polaroid too.

amdgilmore

Well, I gave this a go earlier and it didn't turn out very well.

The photo had a very blue cast to it once I inverted the colours in Photoshop. Is there a trick to doing this from a negative?

And are you using any unusual settings on your camera?

magicbastarder

a colour negative film base will be very reddish, resulting in the colour cast you see. can you select what you think would be a neutral colour and adjust for that?

cnocbui

In Photoshop, you can adjust the levels of the RGB channels to counteract the orange mask used in print film - after you have inverted the image. Once you have spent time getting one frame just right, you can save the curves profile for that film then successive images can just be batch processed to adjust their curves using the profile you saved.

This was quick and dirty and using a slide box as a light source - not ideal - and wasn't my photo or camera (possibly a disposable):



I can give you a rundown on how to use the curves to get a reasonable starting point that should just need a few tweaks.

I haven't used any unusual settings except manually choosing the white balance. I need to read the bit in the manual on using a WB target to set the WB, then I should get slightly better results that require little tweaking.

amdgilmore

Thanks, guys.

Yeah, I can adjust the RGB and saturation levels in PS but it's a pain trying to get the colour to perfectly match the original photo.

The one in my first post was only shot on a cheap colour film, so the colour reproduction isn't a huge deal, but for the other films I'm using (like Ektar and Portra) colour reproduction and tones are basically the whole point.

I'll keep at it though and see if I can get a usable preset for each film type.