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From: Z1Z on 26 Dec 2007 20:00
I spent a few days going through my boxes full of photos spanning the period
1970-2006. I have about two thousand photos to be scanned. In many cases, I
have the negatives. I haven't counted my slides but I probably have around
400-500. Many of the photos and slides would benefit from basic automated
enhancement using Digital Ice, dust removal, color restoration. I would like
to digitize my entire collection, but it is too large a job for me to handle
on my own.

I would like to hire a service to convert my material to digital photo
files, preferably TIFF's. I would like the photos scanned at 600DPI and the
slides scanned at 4,000DPI.

Could anyone recommend a photo-processing firm to do the conversion work for
me? I have looked at the web sites for ScanCafe and DigMyPics, as well as
various others. It is important to me that the work be done on the US and
not sent overseas. Anytime anything is transported, the chance of loss or
damage is increased, and I'd rather pay more than increase the chance I will
lose thirty years of photos. I am very interested in a quality, automated
job, meaning that I don't expect a technician to individually inspect and
color-correct each photo, but some equipment can automatically correct
imperfections.

Can anyone recommend a company that can capably handle this assignment?

From: AAvK on 27 Dec 2007 02:14

"Z1Z" <z1z(a)hotmail.com> wrote in message news:FMmdnTVYvrUaZO_anZ2dnUVZ_gCdnZ2d(a)giganews.com...
>I spent a few days going through my boxes full of photos spanning the period
> 1970-2006. I have about two thousand photos to be scanned. In many cases, I
> have the negatives. I haven't counted my slides but I probably have around
> 400-500. Many of the photos and slides would benefit from basic automated
> enhancement using Digital Ice, dust removal, color restoration. I would like
> to digitize my entire collection, but it is too large a job for me to handle
> on my own.
>
> I would like to hire a service to convert my material to digital photo
> files, preferably TIFF's. I would like the photos scanned at 600DPI and the
> slides scanned at 4,000DPI.
>
> Could anyone recommend a photo-processing firm to do the conversion work for
> me? I have looked at the web sites for ScanCafe and DigMyPics, as well as
> various others. It is important to me that the work be done on the US and
> not sent overseas. Anytime anything is transported, the chance of loss or
> damage is increased, and I'd rather pay more than increase the chance I will
> lose thirty years of photos. I am very interested in a quality, automated
> job, meaning that I don't expect a technician to individually inspect and
> color-correct each photo, but some equipment can automatically correct
> imperfections.
>
> Can anyone recommend a company that can capably handle this assignment?
>


Really good folks here, been around a LONG time too: http://www.colorservices.com/
(California, in a town of 7 campuses of Brooks Intitute of Photography). Some important
stipulations need be designated for scanning is printing dimensions and pixels per inch,
downsampled after the scan to 300 PPI is all that is necassary. If 35mm, then both
positives and negatives can and should be scanned at the same initial resolution. The
general top dimension printing size for 35mm is 11-12x16-18 inches or so, not quite
poster size, and pretty much the same dimension as a 6 megpixel digital file from a
digital camera.

35mm is a 3:2 aspect ratio which is more rectangular than 4:3 (equal sized sections by
equal sized sections), for whatever point.

However as well, files can be software-interpolated to larger by up to 300% so that a print
can be bigger, and still look perfectly fine. You wouldn't keep a file that is literally totally
4,000 PPI! Much less 2,000 of them. That would take up some massive area on any kind
of disc! Just the 300 PPI and the dimension is all that's needed for the perfect print whether
Frontier machine (bathed photo paper from digital projection exposure) or Giclee (ink jet).

....hope this helps with your decisions, and good luck.

--
Giant_Alex }<)))*>
not my site: http://www.e-sword.net/
From: Charlie Hoffpauir on 27 Dec 2007 09:53
On Wed, 26 Dec 2007 23:14:44 -0800, "AAvK" <nonyabidness(a)wahoo.com>
wrote:

>
>"Z1Z" <z1z(a)hotmail.com> wrote in message news:FMmdnTVYvrUaZO_anZ2dnUVZ_gCdnZ2d(a)giganews.com...
>>I spent a few days going through my boxes full of photos spanning the period
>> 1970-2006. I have about two thousand photos to be scanned. In many cases, I
>> have the negatives. I haven't counted my slides but I probably have around
>> 400-500. Many of the photos and slides would benefit from basic automated
>> enhancement using Digital Ice, dust removal, color restoration. I would like
>> to digitize my entire collection, but it is too large a job for me to handle
>> on my own.
>>
>> I would like to hire a service to convert my material to digital photo
>> files, preferably TIFF's. I would like the photos scanned at 600DPI and the
>> slides scanned at 4,000DPI.
>>
>> Could anyone recommend a photo-processing firm to do the conversion work for
>> me? I have looked at the web sites for ScanCafe and DigMyPics, as well as
>> various others. It is important to me that the work be done on the US and
>> not sent overseas. Anytime anything is transported, the chance of loss or
>> damage is increased, and I'd rather pay more than increase the chance I will
>> lose thirty years of photos. I am very interested in a quality, automated
>> job, meaning that I don't expect a technician to individually inspect and
>> color-correct each photo, but some equipment can automatically correct
>> imperfections.
>>
>> Can anyone recommend a company that can capably handle this assignment?
>>
>
>
>Really good folks here, been around a LONG time too: http://www.colorservices.com/
>(California, in a town of 7 campuses of Brooks Intitute of Photography). Some important
>stipulations need be designated for scanning is printing dimensions and pixels per inch,
>downsampled after the scan to 300 PPI is all that is necassary. If 35mm, then both
>positives and negatives can and should be scanned at the same initial resolution. The
>general top dimension printing size for 35mm is 11-12x16-18 inches or so, not quite
>poster size, and pretty much the same dimension as a 6 megpixel digital file from a
>digital camera.
>
>35mm is a 3:2 aspect ratio which is more rectangular than 4:3 (equal sized sections by
>equal sized sections), for whatever point.
>
>However as well, files can be software-interpolated to larger by up to 300% so that a print
>can be bigger, and still look perfectly fine. You wouldn't keep a file that is literally totally
>4,000 PPI! Much less 2,000 of them. That would take up some massive area on any kind
>of disc! Just the 300 PPI and the dimension is all that's needed for the perfect print whether
>Frontier machine (bathed photo paper from digital projection exposure) or Giclee (ink jet).
>
>...hope this helps with your decisions, and good luck.

Well, the trouble with just scanning 2000 frames and applying a
general "correction" to all of them is that they are not all the same.
Some are truly worthy of a 4000 ppi scan, and many are surely not. If
the OP isn't willing to cull them beforehand, and is willing to pay
for the service, then I'd say go ahead. there may well be many gems in
that batch that he would lose forever if he went with your criteria.
For example, what about the quality slide that captures an
irreplacable moment, but requires cropping out 75% of the image? How
does that fit with your criteria for deciding beforehand what to scan
at?

My 35mm scans, scanned with a Nikon LS-IV at 2700 ppi, result in 25-30
MB tiff files. I've scanned perhaps 500 35 mm frames, both slides and
negatives, and probably don't have *any* worth scanning at 4000 ppi.
But then, I'm an amateur photographer and shot everything hand-held.
Still, I'm sure good photographers shooting with tripods have lots of
images that give great 4000 ppi scans.

I'm guessing 4000 ppi scans woulb be about 66MB. 66 MB x 2000 frames
of 35 mm film uses about 132,000 MB or 132 GB. I have 4 hard drives in
my computer and the smallest is 200 GB, so unless I've really screwed
up the math, that isn't an unreasonable amount of disk space to
dedicate to irreplacable images. And besides, the OP can always "cull"
the poor images by downsizing "after" the scanning process is
complete, if he feels it's necessary to reclaim a few GB of disk
space.

--
Charlie Hoffpauir
http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~charlieh/
From: MoiMoi on 27 Dec 2007 19:02
In article <pjd7n39vd46pqnl55ig4v7cs0k88m5kkpn(a)4ax.com>,
invalid(a)invalid.com says...

> I'm guessing 4000 ppi scans woulb be about 66MB.

61.3, but who's counting? :-)

MM
From: Greg Campbell on 28 Dec 2007 22:02
MoiMoi wrote:

> In article <pjd7n39vd46pqnl55ig4v7cs0k88m5kkpn(a)4ax.com>,
> invalid(a)invalid.com says...
>
>> I'm guessing 4000 ppi scans woulb be about 66MB.
>
> 61.3, but who's counting? :-)
>
> MM


FWLIW, my FS4000 poops out 138,001Kb files. (5888x4000x48-bit)
125mb after cropping the frame edges.

-G
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