Negatives scanning

[tvrforever]

We've finally got our wedding photo negatives back from the Kodak storage library and now want to scan them into digital images - unfortunately they aren't 35mm negatives (but in strips 6-8 inches long - will check exact format later) so won't fit Dad's rather posh (ie V expensive) automated slide scanner.

So does anybody have any experience with any companies offering this service? and any points to look out for etc?

[jwyatt]

I have had the basic "photo CD" efforts from Boots, and have had slides scanned to CD when being processed at Fuji, and both came back markedly worse than from my acer scanwith 2720 film scanner - which takes strips of negs as well as mounted slides. If you have the time, you could buy one and do it yourself - it was only £250 new, Aeons ago, these and similar film scanners must be cheap as chips now on Ebay since everyone wants digital.

As a mark of how good the results are, I still use my film SLR and slides, scanned in using the Acer, for landscapes - the results are better than with my EOS20D, which as a typical 1.6x crop-factor DSLR is not at its best for landscapes because of the ultra-wide lens needed.

[scalper]

120 medium format negative
any professional photolab will be able do a good scan

however depending on the number of negatives that you need to scan it might end up being rather expensive

[tvrforever]

any recommendations on a good lab at all?

[EmmaP]

I can recommend a lab in Nottingham - Viva Imaging

http://www.vivaimaging.co.uk/prepress.htm

and a lab in London - Metro

http://www.metroimaging.co.uk/whatsnew/onlineconta...

[dhutch]

Im interested in reading this.
- I was also very underwhelmed by the odd few 'photo cds' when having 35mm devloped at a number of well known places (kodak, max speilman, boots, etc). Back when having digital images was usefull, but it was still uncommon for shot with digital.

I now have obvously a stack load of photos & negatives that it would be very nice have digitised. Proberbly about 500 or so.
- Currently quotes ive looked up have been prohibtivly expesive for what you get and i just scan in the photos as and when i want a particular one. Using a bog standard canon led lit flatbed scanner (i have 6*4 prints of basicaly everything).


Daniel

[EmmaP]

Getting a really good scan of a piece of film (drum scan is best) really is worth it when you want optimum quality. Very expensive though and not really necessary for family snaps.