Where to get highres scans?/process

What format, 35mm 120 ?
What res ?
Walk in / walk out lab or send away ?
What quantities, the odd roll or 10+ ?
 
well - I normally dev. my own B&W, but if I need a better scan than I can get on my 8800F, I take it to my local lab - CC Imaging - and get them to run it through their drum scanner.
 
TheBigYin said:
well - I normally dev. my own B&W, but if I need a better scan than I can get on my 8800F, I take it to my local lab - CC Imaging - and get them to run it through their drum scanner.
Click to expand...

HuH! at those prices it all helps to kill off 35mm film use:-
e.g dev and scan 35mm/36exp to CD for only 6X4" print quality = £11...for only 10X8" quality=£24 :eek:
For me, on average, only about 10% of shots are winners (my version of a winner not David Bailey's) from a roll of film, so 100 winning shots per year for 25 rolls of film, dev and scanned for 10X8" quality = £600.......erm I'm going stick to Asda for 6X4" quality and my and most other flatbed scanners can scan for a decent 10X8" print.
 
That's just it though Brian, I don't take a full roll in for develop and scan - I develop and scan it myself, and if - and only if - either I or my customer actually really wants a huge file to play with, then - and only then - do I take the negative or tranny to the lab, and get them to scan that single frame. Unless a customer is paying, and requires bills to substantiate processing/developing costs, I'm highly unlikely to take a full roll in there for process and scan. It's a while since I used their services for this kind of work tbh. so I'd rather not mention costs, as they may not be their current prices - but it's certainly more cost effective than say getting my own Imacon 949 on the desktop for the number of shots I need. For me, that's what professional labs are for - to do single shot stuff. Though I have to be honest - if it's purely for a shot for my own wall - then I'd probably get the lab to do a proper wet print for me...

The OP asked for details on High-resolution scans from 35mm, and with the best will in the world, these days the typical flatbed scanners 2400dpi on a 35mm frame is not going to produce something that's considered high resolution - 3400x2267 or around 7.7 Megapixels. Now - I'm actually pretty happy with that kind of resolution for most day-to-day stuff - especially as most of my stuff gets printed at 10x8 at most, or resized down for display on here, but I'm not about to call it high-resolution, and certainly compared to the OP's 5Dii, it's going to fare poorly
 
Try Club 35, with their high resolution CD you get an image roughly equivalent to 6 megapixels which is enough for a 10 x 8 print when printed at 300 dpi which about every lab prints at.

Any bigger and that and the price (pretty much anywhere) will go up a lot and unless you want to print massive 20 x 16s then the resolution above is fine for most things.
 
I get left a little but confused during conversations like this, and I don't mean to be offensive so please don't all jump on me.

I've spoken to many many full time professional photographers, working in a whole manner of genres, and alot of them told me the same thing, 6-8 megapixels will fill a billboard at the right viewing distance....

When it comes to experienced digital shooters, many will agree, megapixel count on a digital camera isn't all that much to write home about, give a good photographer a 10mp camera and the best lenses and their prints will blow you away at any size from a good dslr....

SO.....where does all come from with film guys who think 6mp film scan is only good enough for 10x8, when I printed a 24x16" from a Nikon D40 3 years ago and it was fine?

You still have the ability to upscale, you can still adjust contrast and increase sharpness to minimise quality loss, as far as I can tell it's no different?

6mp film scan, 6mp dslr file, what's the difference when it comes to upscaling? Again, an honest question and not a dig
 
You're quite right there Danny, 6-7 mp is fine for pretty much anything I want to do, and it'll print as large as I'm likely to want to push a 35mm image tbh.

The few times I've needed something larger as a scan, it's generally been at "customer request/requirements" - either because they're just used to getting images submitted by people shooting full frame digital cameras at 20+ mp, or occasionally, because they had in mind some fairly radical cropping of the image or other treatment where a larger file to go at was an advantage. In situations like that, I just smile sweetly, say "of course I can get a larger scan for you..." and take the money :)

I think that some of the possible confusion over print sizes comes from taking the file dimensions and dividing by the inkjet printers native resolution - say 300dpi... so for example with the figures I quoted a 3400x2267px scan on a 300dpi printer, estimating for printing you'd get something like 11" x 7.5". I'm not saying it's right of course - I'm looking right now at a 16"x20" print of an image taken on a 3.2mp Canon Ixus V3, and you can't see any pixel blocking from around a meter away...
 
TheBigYin said:
That's just it though Brian, I don't take a full roll in for develop and scan - I develop and scan it myself, and if - and only if - either I or my customer actually really wants a huge file to play with, then - and only then - do I take the negative or tranny to the lab, and get them to scan that single frame. Unless a customer is paying, and requires bills to substantiate processing/developing costs, I'm highly unlikely to take a full roll in there for process and scan. It's a while since I used their services for this kind of work tbh. so I'd rather not mention costs, as they may not be their current prices - but it's certainly more cost effective than say getting my own Imacon 949 on the desktop for the number of shots I need. For me, that's what professional labs are for - to do single shot stuff. Though I have to be honest - if it's purely for a shot for my own wall - then I'd probably get the lab to do a proper wet print for me...

The OP asked for details on High-resolution scans from 35mm, and with the best will in the world, these days the typical flatbed scanners 2400dpi on a 35mm frame is not going to produce something that's considered high resolution - 3400x2267 or around 7.7 Megapixels. Now - I'm actually pretty happy with that kind of resolution for most day-to-day stuff - especially as most of my stuff gets printed at 10x8 at most, or resized down for display on here, but I'm not about to call it high-resolution, and certainly compared to the OP's 5Dii, it's going to fare poorly
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Those Fuji frontier machines at supermarkets are VG and can give higher resolutions which I would pay extra, I'm going to ask the operator next time if he can scan for 10X15" print quality:-

http://bermangraphics.com/press/frontier.htm

[FONT=Arial, Arial, Helvetica]Scanning 35mm Slides with the Frontier Printer
Not many people know about this, but the Frontier printer can also produce high resolution scans (3000 pixels per inch) from 35mm slides and negatives for a remarkably low cost. (Costco's price was 59 cents each!) Over a one week period we had 100 of Larry’s old slides scanned to create a new Film Gallery and two galleries of images for sale on BermanArt.com. The scanned files were 4535x3035 pixels and were saved as 12 to 19 megabyte high quality Jpeg’s. These opened in Photoshop as a 39 megabyte PSD files. Not all Frontiers’ will output at this resolution; it will depend on the IC (image control) software in use. Ask the operator to scan for a 10x15 inch print and that will set the unit to output at its highest quality. [/FONT]
 
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TheBigYin said:
You're quite right there Danny, 6-7 mp is fine for pretty much anything I want to do, and it'll print as large as I'm likely to want to push a 35mm image tbh.

The few times I've needed something larger as a scan, it's generally been at "customer request/requirements" - either because they're just used to getting images submitted by people shooting full frame digital cameras at 20+ mp, or occasionally, because they had in mind some fairly radical cropping of the image or other treatment where a larger file to go at was an advantage. In situations like that, I just smile sweetly, say "of course I can get a larger scan for you..." and take the money :)

I think that some of the possible confusion over print sizes comes from taking the file dimensions and dividing by the inkjet printers native resolution - say 300dpi... so for example with the figures I quoted a 3400x2267px scan on a 300dpi printer, estimating for printing you'd get something like 11" x 7.5". I'm not saying it's right of course - I'm looking right now at a 16"x20" print of an image taken on a 3.2mp Canon Ixus V3, and you can't see any pixel blocking from around a meter away...
Click to expand...

I must admit that maximum print size in general confuses me (Not difficult, I know! :D)

Does the user's knowledge of their flatbed scanner make a *siginificant* difference when comparing with the same sized DSLR file? Sorry if it's a dumb question :D
 
Chris L said:
I must admit that maximum print size in general confuses me (Not difficult, I know! :D)

Does the user's knowledge of their flatbed scanner make a *siginificant* difference when comparing with the same sized DSLR file? Sorry if it's a dumb question :D
Click to expand...

Hell yeah, I've seen wet scans from a V750 done by a skilled operator that put alot of drum scans to shame. Scanning really is a skill, stepping outside of epson scan and vuescan and using something like silverfast can induce a massive improvement if you know what you're doing. On the other hand, if you dont, it'll just balls up and you'll get sick of it :LOL:
 
TheBigYin said:
You're quite right there Danny, 6-7 mp is fine for pretty much anything I want to do, and it'll print as large as I'm likely to want to push a 35mm image tbh.

The few times I've needed something larger as a scan, it's generally been at "customer request/requirements" - either because they're just used to getting images submitted by people shooting full frame digital cameras at 20+ mp, or occasionally, because they had in mind some fairly radical cropping of the image or other treatment where a larger file to go at was an advantage. In situations like that, I just smile sweetly, say "of course I can get a larger scan for you..." and take the money :)

I think that some of the possible confusion over print sizes comes from taking the file dimensions and dividing by the inkjet printers native resolution - say 300dpi... so for example with the figures I quoted a 3400x2267px scan on a 300dpi printer, estimating for printing you'd get something like 11" x 7.5". I'm not saying it's right of course - I'm looking right now at a 16"x20" print of an image taken on a 3.2mp Canon Ixus V3, and you can't see any pixel blocking from around a meter away...
Click to expand...

Thanks for the response fella, so essentially there is no difference, either way the scaned files are ok to be upscaled, as a dslr file would be. So long as the file is sufficiently sharp I would assume.

Thanks again (y)
 
the only real thing to watch for is that the grain on film can interact badly with sharpening algorithms, personally, I prefer to scan with very little or no sharpening from the scanning software, and apply whatever sharpening is needed myself. I tend to favour using a High-Pass filter layer rather than the USM or smart sharpen, but as with everything, it's sometimes down to personal preference.

I think that sometimes, this is why processing machine scans from some sources can appear a little over-grainy on films like XP2 - it's not a massively grainy film for a 400ISO film, but if the minilab have cranked up the sharpening settings to make Joe Blogg's P&S snapshots look "all crisp and nearly as good as a digital camera", then the grain artifacts can go horribly OTT.
 
Yeah absolutely I can imagine that's where alot of problems occur. I never scan with sharpening applied, I do a 3 stage sharpen in photoshop, post capture, local, then for output :)
 
Mahoneyd187 said:
Hell yeah, I've seen wet scans from a V750 done by a skilled operator that put alot of drum scans to shame.
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I haven't seen anything from a V750 wet or dry that is clearly better than a dedicated scanner, never mind a drum scan...:LOL:
 
joxby said:
I haven't seen anything from a V750 wet or dry that is clearly better than a dedicated scanner, never mind a drum scan...:LOL:
Click to expand...

With respect, with the same operator a drum scan is clearly better, but that wasn't the comparison I was making....

My point was, somebody who really knows what they're doing on a V750, will produce a more usable scan than a cheap drum scan and a clueless operator. It's not all about resolution as I'm sure you appreciate
 
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