 Kris Haskins |
Scanning Slides
Does anyone know where I can get my slides and negatives scanned without having to pay out the nose?
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John A. Lind |
Kris, Many flatbed scanners are not the best with transparencies. It seems as if the method with most is an afterthought. The better scans are done with a high resolution film scanner . . . which you have said is beyond your budget right now. A film scanner for negatives and transparencies is on my list, but outside the budget right now also. Currently I have mine done to a "Kodak Photo CD" by a professional imaging house. These are high resolution scans. There is a $10 base charge for the CD plus $1 per "consumer" scan. Images can be added to the CD later at $1 per scan until it's full. Photo CD image files are higher resolution and different from the "Picture CD" and "Picture Disk" JPEG's you get on them. Several different resolutions are combined into a single file. It requires imaging software capable of accessing Photo CD files such as Photo Shop or Picture Window. I don't recommend using Photo CD files without some method for adjusting contrast, color balance and saturation anyway. I've had the best results with scanning Kodachrome 64, E100S, and EPN-100 for web images using this method. You will have to decide whether a cost similar to this makes Photo CD's from a pro imaging house near you acceptable. -- John
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Kris Haskins |
Since I live in the middle of nowhere USA, there aren't any labs near me. I get my processing done mail-order, and would like to do the same for scans. Can anyone recomend a lab that provides this service?
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Ken Pang |
Kris, Looking at your photos, I agree, they are "acceptable" but hardly what you would call a good scan. However, one of beauties of electronic images is that you can improve them significantly. The top image looks like brightness lattitude is a little too wide- IE, there are some transparent parts which are blown out of detail, and some darker parts which are exposed correctly. I'm at a internet cafe in Perth at the moment (And thus no equipment) but once I get home, I will download your photo and see if I can run a few filters over them to make them look better. You might want to try to do this: Step 1: Lower brightness of the image. Step 2: Increase contrast slightly Step 3: Run an unsharp mask over the image Step 4: Do very selective dust removal or clone over imperfect areas. I'll be back in Sydney to do this by Saturday and I'll try to post it back with your credits. Cheers,
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Ken Pang |
Kris, had a go at improving your photo, the results really aren't worth posting. I could make most of it significantly better, but doing so made the main area of the photo, the over-exposed part, even more obvious. Sorry... I tried, but I think the scan is simply missing the data to improve upon. Regards, Ken.
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John A. Lind |
Kris, I kind of live in the "middle of nowhere" USA also . . . in Indiana. I use a pro lab in Indianapolis. I found it by asking several local professional photographers what lab(s) they use. Since the lab is not open on weekends I end up sending work to them by priority mail and they send it back by UPS. Because of shipping costs I try to stockpile a number of things to be done at the same time . . . printing of slides, developing film from my medium format camera, etc. Call some local, independent pro studio/wedding photographers, explain what you're trying to do, and ask what lab(s) they use for developing and printing. Most pro photogs will share this information . . . and they tend to be finicky about the labs they use too. -- John
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John A. Lind |
Kris, One more thought . . . Ken has a good suggestion to try working with your scans more before throwing in the towel. Even with the Photo CD scans I tweak the contrast, color balance and use an unsharp mask before resizing them for web use. There is a bit of a learning curve to it. Most of my later web images are much better than some of the first ones I did a couple of years ago. -- John
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Kris Haskins |
Thank you both for your help. I'll keep trying till something works :).
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