35mm Negative Scanning

MartMax

Hi all

I am fascinated by technology delivered by digital cameras but still love my old Canon EOS 300, and my zoom lenses. Nowadays, lots of people have digital cameras and keep them on drives or discs. I don't want to get left behind and still want to to stick with film camera. I know home scanners won't give professional results, therefore I wanna get professionals to do it.

Therefore, I wonder where's the best place than can do film negative scanning at a good price, with good results, less quality loss, etc. in Dublin City? Perhaps sthing like Kodak PhotoCD. I know most camera shops like Spectra and Boots do scanning, but are they any good? Suggest me few good places to go for this. Thanks!

DotOrg

quality is all dependant on what you want to use the images for. If you have a lot of shots you would probably be better off buying a dedicated film scanner.

Spectra are rubbish quality even if you just get 10x8s printed off the digital files. I've never tried Boots etc but most consumer scanning services are designed for the files to be e-mailed rather than as an archiving service to store your old negatives

MartMax

i'm hoping that i am able to archive negatives at a low cost or at least reasonable price.

Alun

You can get a pretty good quality dedicated film scanner (e.g. Canon CanoScan FS4000US) that will do 4,000dpi for about €6-700. If you have a good number of negatives to scan such a device will pay itself back in no time.

DotOrg

i'm hoping that i am able to archive negatives at a low cost or at least reasonable price.

what do you call a low price?
and it's all relative, what quality do you want them at?
negatives, stored properly last quite a long time

Invader Zim

Alun wrote:

You can get a pretty good quality dedicated film scanner (e.g. Canon CanoScan FS4000US) that will do 4,000dpi for about €6-700. If you have a good number of negatives to scan such a device will pay itself back in no time.

My advice :

Rent a dedicated film/slide scanner THEN BUY A CANON EOS 300D for €800 (or a 20D if you can go €1200).

No more messing with film - pro's haven't used film in 3 years (except the die-hards and mid/large format boys).

Film is dead - Kodak aren't even making film cameras anymore and they're winding down their processing plants.

DotOrg

any idea where you can rent them from?

PH01

...or you could buy a Plustek OpticFilm 7200 for €195

Gyck

...or you could buy a Plustek OpticFilm 7200 for €195

Is that from the cam-ireland site?

joolsveer

I am on the lookout for a scanner which will scan slides and negatives 35mm to 6X6cm. I don't want to spend more than €200 and I want better than 5 mega pixel quality. Am I am living in a fool's paradise?

I came across this URL http://www.scantips.com/basic13f.html which gives some useful info.

Quote from plustek pdf (and I was only looking for 5 mega pixels!)

Scanning at 7200 dpi, you have the potential to turn a 135 slide (3.5 x 2.3 cm) into a printing quality A1 poster (84 x 55.2 cm). OpticFilm 7200 is an excellent solution for magazines and other printed material.
Compared to digital cameras, this film scanner has more than a 68-Mega-pixel capability, easily overwhelming popular digital cameras. For home and leisure usage, you can scan your images and share them on the web with fellow photographers. You can create e-cards, or simply send your images via email to friends and family.

PH01

Gyck wrote:

Is that from the cam-ireland site?

It's a German site - use to be http://www.ny-camera.com/ but is now http://www.digiwowo.net/
Haven't used them myself though I'm sure they're ok.

Gyck

Ah, thanks, it looked familiar. I haven't been on the site for a while.
I'd sure like to get a scanner to do medium format but they're a little pricey...

MartMax

Plustek OpticFilm 7200 seems to be good enuff to do the job. Will do more research and decide later. thanks folks for the help. btw Canon EOS 20D is a hot stuff too, it's on my Wish List now!

Rew

Iv a similar problem except its 7500+ slides that I want scanned

Been looking at the Plustek but it may take a few years to scan the lot using that.

MartMax

:mad: this is not so great! was out in the frosty sunday & now my antic EOS300's built-in flash can't flip out no more! :mad:

joolsveer

I sometimes use 35mm colour negative film and have the processing carried out in Fuji franchised camera shops (or shops using Fuji equipment). I recently left a film with Camera Centre in Blanchardstown. They assured me that the digital scanning onto CD would be very high quality in terms of maximum number of pixels. When I collected the CD I found the resolution was 1840 X 1232 with jpeg file sizes between 628 Kb and 1,257 Kb.

Is this the standard size for 35mm negative scans? Where could I get a higher resolution without it costing the earth?

Borderfox

the Plustek got a great review and Amateur Photographer this week, good price though...

Zaphod B

I know I might get shouted down for saying this, but don't automatically rule out flatbeds. I got a Canon 8400F which I use for scanning colour and b&w negs and slides, and it gives very nice results with both. The main downside is of course that it takes a lot of time and patience scanning all your negs 8 at a time, although a lot of time and patience would surely also be required with a dedicated film scanner.

Just as an aside, why are people still using threads like this to remind us how stupid we are for still using 35mm film? I expect that by now the majority of film users have tried digital. We're not sitting around cursing our antiquated equipment and waiting for some saviour to introduce us to the magical world of digital; we (or at least I) find the results agreeable and the experience enjoyable, or we wouldn't do it. If you want to tell us film is dead, why not create the world's 1 billionth "Film is Dead" thread, and leave the thread about "35mm Negative Scanning" for discussion about 35mm negative scanning?

joolsveer

Has anyone here got any information as to where I might get good quality 35mm negative scans carried out commercially?

joolsveer

While I am using digital cameras for a few years now I still like to use film cameras from time to time. I am not yet prepared to consign film to the rubbish dump. I don't expect to get 10Mb files from a commercial processor but I was told that Camera Exchange can give large TIFF files from developed films. Has anyone here tried them? What is the verdict?

DotOrg

Q: Has anyone here got any information as to where I might get good quality 35mm negative scans carried out commercially?

any fuji centre can do them at sizes that will let you print at 12x8 at 300dpi. most won't though as it takes about 25 mins per film.

i work in a fuji centre and would do that but for a cheap price you'll need to give a fair ammount of time as scanning could only be done at non busy periods

joolsveer

DotOrg wrote:

Q: Has anyone here got any information as to where I might get good quality 35mm negative scans carried out commercially?

any fuji centre can do them at sizes that will let you print at 12x8 at 300dpi. most won't though as it takes about 25 mins per film.

i work in a fuji centre and would do that but for a cheap price you'll need to give a fair ammount of time as scanning could only be done at non busy periods

Thanks for the information. I might give it a try. Am I right in thinking you are located on Dame Street?

DotOrg

my fuji place is in the pharmacy on dame st, yes.

if it were me, and even though i work with a photo lab, i'd buy a film scanner and do it at home rather than do it commercially, better results and cheaper in the long term

why bother scanning though just to archive, correctly stored negs will last decades if not centuries

joolsveer

DotOrg wrote:

my fuji place is in the pharmacy on dame st, yes.

if it were me, and even though i work with a photo lab, i'd buy a film scanner and do it at home rather than do it commercially, better results and cheaper in the long term

why bother scanning though just to archive, correctly stored negs will last decades if not centuries

I have a scanner which will scan 120 and 35mm negatives and diapositives but with old negatives dust becomes a problem so I would prefer to have the negatives scanned at time of development.

Borderfox

They said the Plustek can get around this problem by the last scan being in infrared (don't quote me )

ChityWest

I know there are good recommendations here on which one to buy or which commercial service to use - but does anyone know where a high end 35m negative scanner can be rented from preferably in Dublin ? I know I will only ever use it for a couple days as I dont use film anymore - so I dont want to buy one when its only going to get very limited use.

Or would anyone here who owns one be interested in renting it out for a few days ?

Rew

If you do find one let me know im still looking for a scanning solution for the 7,500 slides we have at home.

ChityWest

In the same boat - i have negatives going a few years too. I am really surprised no one is hiring out this gear - by the looks of it theres a lot of money to be made at it.

elven

Wouldn't there be one at the camera club? That's where I scanned my slides/negs back in Glasgow.

ChityWest

Are you talking about this camera club :

http://www.dublincameraclub.ie/

I am not a member but if they had a high resolution neg scanner I would definitely join - does anyone else who is a member know if they have one ?

And if so are there any particular terms of access ? ie x hours per week or whatever ?

elven

Hmm it doesn't say on the website that they actually have any digital gear for members' use, only studio and darkroom kit. Just seem to be trying to push their "Here's how to use your digital camera" course. But it might be worth a quick phonecall just in case.

Benster

Folks, I'd say your best bet is to buy a scanner and do the work yourself, even though it will take an age. Any shop/organisation that you employ to do the scanning for you is going to charge you a fortune, and the process is out of your control. Even though it will take a lot of time to do the job yourself, you're still saving a lot of money and you can decide what level of quality is acceptable to you.

I have a 2yr old Epson Perfection 3170 at home that takes both 35mm and 6x6cm slides, scans at up to 6400dpi and regularly produces scans in excess of 20Mb at full res. There is more than enough data in those scans to do A3 and if I pushed it, A2 prints (less quality there though). And the scanner cost €100.
At least try this route anyway.

B.

CrowdedHouse

I had decided to take a chance and buy the basic Plustek one last week and was actually ordering it from Amazon when I discovered that they're not sending electronic/photo stuff to Ireland anymore