Not Impressed at All with EasySlideScanning.co.uk

s162216

s162216

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Samuel
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Hi,

I just sent 4 images for 4 free scans with easyslidescanning.co.uk as they looked like quite a good service, used 'proper' equipment (Nikon Coolscan 5000 and 8000), scanned at 4000dpi, I'd seen good comments from several other people and it was totally free for the 4 scans. O.K, I thought, what can go wrong?

Well,

I get the CD back yesterday with my slides. Open the case and the first thing I notice is a series of horizontal scratches on the top edge of the disc. I load the disc up onto the computer and look at the TIFF images. They looked nothing like my original slides. I held one of my slides up to the light and compared it to the image. It was a sunset across a field and as it was with Velvia 50, the bright orange sun rays had gone a great dramatic red and you could clearly see the green grass/crop on the slide.
On the scan however, it was just dark, you could only see a faint outline of the grass as its just so dark. The sunset itself is no where near as bright or dramatic as it is on the slide. All of the other scans were exactly the same, dark and the colours were not accurate.

As my luck would be though I managed to drop the nice slide of the sunset and it now has a big scratch accross the left hand side. Hopefully getting it scanned somewhere else might get rid of the scratch and improve it a bit so I can get another copy made should I want to.

Oh well it was free but I am not going to be using them again. I am now going to have a go with scanitall.co.uk as they seem a lot better and actually say that they use colour correction, scratch and dust removal etc whilst easyslidescanning.co.uk don't. Hopefully I will get a better result this time.
 
I know its been a while since I posted this thread but I found the DVD that easyslidescanning.co.uk sent me of my scanned slides. I recently got a slide scanned by another company, ScanItAll, and I have to say that they did a much better job than easyslidescanning did.

Heres what Easyslidescanning sent me:



Now in comparison look what ScanItAll sent me:



The image is nicely bright and saturated like the original slide taken on Kodak E-100VS and those horrible black edges from the scan have been cropped out. (I know I could get rid of them easily but if for instance I had sent 100 slides off for scanning that would be quite annoying) It looks almost exactly like the original slide. Both images were scanned at 4000 dpi on a Nikon Coolscan with digital ICE and have had no editing apart from resizing.

I think I know now who I would trust to scan all of my slides if I could be bothered and had the money to get them done!
 
Obviously there have been some faults with easyslidescanning in your experience but one thing I would say in their defence is that just because a slide looks nice when you hold it up to a light or window doesn't mean it will scan well. Your brain is very clever and can adjust to how bright/dim the backlight is and it can also fill in the gaps so that to a certain extent you can see what you want to see. On the other hand a scanner has a light of a fixed brightness and the sensor only sees what it sees. If the slide is under exposed the sensor will have trouble picking up the detail and the image will be dark even though it looks right when you hold it up to a window.

I've not used easyslide scanning but this is exactly the experience I have with many of my slides which are under exposed when I've tried to scan them.
 
Looking on the viewer and projector gives exactly the same effect - the slide looks way way brighter and saturated than the scanned image.

I took the image with flash as it was a pretty dim building the coach was in.

I'm the sort of person who likes to only get the occasional slide scanned so I decided to use a dedicated service with 4000 dpi, Digital ICE etc and 16 bit TIFF images as an option. Plus the fact that my dad has about 200 - 400 Kodachrome slides from about 1969 - present in 127, 126 and 35mm that he wants to get scanned so I decided to try out a few services to decide which would be the best for him.

As I mentioned at the top, in the sunset image there is a clear field of Velvia 50 style saturated green ploughed grass or some sort of other vegetation in the foreground when the slide is projected yet in the scanned image below it practically doesn't exist, all is visible is a faint outline.



Plus the scanned image doesn't have the seriously nicely oversaturated red, orange and green tones of Velvia at all, the sunset is much more dramatic when viewing the slide.
 
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Sorry Samuel perhaps I should have been clearer but I was talking about your velvia shot not the coach one. Like I was saying, if the light in the scanner isn't as bright as the light in the projector or whatever then the sensor isn't going to see the same image as your eye does.
 
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