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> Google downrez'd all my photos, so the negatives are all I have Wow, Google ate your one digital copy? That's tragic. What's the approximate resolution you

> Google downrez'd all my photos, so the negatives are all I have Wow, Google ate your one digital copy? That's tragic. What's the approximate resolution you could get out of a scan from these labs? I was interested in getting into film cameras at one point, and I was disappointed with how low the scanning resolution is from most labs. For example mpix only advertises 18MB, which they say is good enough for a 12in by 18in print. North Coast Photo (what Ken Rockwell recommends) is even worse! What if you want something to put on the wall? Granted, if the original film you shoot is perfect you can have a print done from the negatives, but that kind of defeats the point of having a high quality scan as a backup.

jrockway 6y ago
Yeah, paying people to scan your photos doesn't yield good results. I did that early on and found it expensive and low quality. Honestly, the process they use doesn't scale well, and I think they offer film scans to be nice, rather than because it's a viable business. With my home setup, I can easily do 50-80 megapixels on a 4x5 negative. I use a flatbed photo scanner (the Epson V800) and wet-mount the film. It is Quite The Process involving a lot of parts (liquids, optical film to place on top of the mount, careful calibration of the focus point, etc.) but the results are excellent and relatively repeatable. But, all in, I'd estimate that it's probably a half hour of labor per photo, so you can see why labs charge so much. (Dry mounting doesn't save that much time, because of the amount of time you spend avoiding dust and optical artifacts intrinsic in using two extra sheets of glass.) The real professionals use drum scanners. They are quite expensive, but offer incredibly high resolution and decent throughput for the operator. Looking around at prices, for $100 you can get a 320MP scan of a 4x5 negative yielding a 1.7GB file. http://www.drumscanning.com/rates.html http://www.drumscanning.com/rates.html For fine grained black and white films, you can certainly extract information that actually exists. As someone who mostly uses T-Max 400, though, that would be overkill. I can't imagine getting much more information out of my photos than I get with a flatbed. In summary, you can see why even pixel peepers are content with their Sony A7R. Press button, get 50 megapixels. And no toxic chemicals being absorbed through your skin.
- bscphil 6y ago
  Wow, I didn't realize you did your own scans. That's very interesting and cool, thanks for the information about it. Looks like you can get those scanners used for pretty reasonable prices. Maybe if I've got a house one day and I think the odds of having to move within a few years are low I'll get into it and try setting up a lab. > In summary, you can see why even pixel peepers are content with their Sony A7R. Press button, get 50 megapixels. And no toxic chemicals being absorbed through your skin. Yep, and on top of that we're not limited by the sRGB gamut or bit depth issues of early digital cameras. Recent ones produce raw files that are extremely easy to develop and manipulate into something very nice looking. The thing is, even on top of the enjoyment some people get out of working with film, if you're after a particular film-like look you might be able to save yourself a significant amount of post-processing time by just going with film. I've seen no one-click filter that can approximate it.

jrockway 6y ago

Yeah, paying people to scan your photos doesn't yield good results. I did that early on and found it expensive and low quality. Honestly, the process they use doesn't scale well, and I think they offer film scans to be nice, rather than because it's a viable business. With my home setup, I can easily do 50-80 megapixels on a 4x5 negative. I use a flatbed photo scanner (the Epson V800) and wet-mount the film. It is Quite The Process involving a lot of parts (liquids, optical film to place on top of the mount, careful calibration of the focus point, etc.) but the results are excellent and relatively repeatable. But, all in, I'd estimate that it's probably a half hour of labor per photo, so you can see why labs charge so much. (Dry mounting doesn't save that much time, because of the amount of time you spend avoiding dust and optical artifacts intrinsic in using two extra sheets of glass.) The real professionals use drum scanners. They are quite expensive, but offer incredibly high resolution and decent throughput for the operator. Looking around at prices, for $100 you can get a 320MP scan of a 4x5 negative yielding a 1.7GB file. http://www.drumscanning.com/rates.html http://www.drumscanning.com/rates.html For fine grained black and white films, you can certainly extract information that actually exists. As someone who mostly uses T-Max 400, though, that would be overkill. I can't imagine getting much more information out of my photos than I get with a flatbed. In summary, you can see why even pixel peepers are content with their Sony A7R. Press button, get 50 megapixels. And no toxic chemicals being absorbed through your skin.

bscphil 6y ago
Wow, I didn't realize you did your own scans. That's very interesting and cool, thanks for the information about it. Looks like you can get those scanners used for pretty reasonable prices. Maybe if I've got a house one day and I think the odds of having to move within a few years are low I'll get into it and try setting up a lab. > In summary, you can see why even pixel peepers are content with their Sony A7R. Press button, get 50 megapixels. And no toxic chemicals being absorbed through your skin. Yep, and on top of that we're not limited by the sRGB gamut or bit depth issues of early digital cameras. Recent ones produce raw files that are extremely easy to develop and manipulate into something very nice looking. The thing is, even on top of the enjoyment some people get out of working with film, if you're after a particular film-like look you might be able to save yourself a significant amount of post-processing time by just going with film. I've seen no one-click filter that can approximate it.