Any recommendations for a place in Cleveland that can do high quality scanning of prints, negatives, or slides for a decent price?  thanks!

I thought I posted a response - sort of - but maybe I forgot to click the "Post" button. Sometimes I do that.

 

I can't answer your question directly, but a Google search or a browse through the classifieds section of a photography magazine might help. If you do find a source (and not all of them are in big cities), figure the total estimated cost of your project and decide whether you might be better off buying a film scanner that will be there whenever you come up with something to do. The price/performance ratio for scanners has improved a lot over the past several years from what it used to be. Drum scans done by competent operators usually are really expensive, and if you're going for the highest-attainable resolution the file sizes can get very large. If you have to send the work out of town, don't forget shipping costs. When turning your precious originals over to someone else, there's always the chance that they could be lost in transit or in the shop, too, or your images could be pirated by an employee.

 

For archiving, reproducing, or publishing prints almost any flatbed scanner with 1200dpi or higher, from a reputable manufacturer, should be satisfactory; print reproduction seldom requires more than 300dpi resolution, which gives considerable room for enlargement. The resolution of commercially-processed prints and snapshots isn't often so high as to justify scan resolution above 1200dpi.

 

In recent years, prosumer-level film scanners makers have come out with gear that very closely approaches the quality of scans attainable from drum scanners

Nikon makes some very good film scanners for transparencies and negatives; I own one that does an outstanding job on negatives up to medium format (120/220 roll film). I had 4000dpi drum scan of a 120 negative that had cost more than $25, and when I got the Nikon 9000ED I re-scanned it at the same resolution. Blown up at 100% side-by-side on screen, I couldn't tell the difference between the two scans. The hitch is that four or five years ago the Nikon scanner cost almost $2,000, and I think that the market for film scanners has become sufficiently competitive that Nikon probably will drop out of it before too much longer. They haven't released new drivers for their film scanners in several years, and have never published 64-bit drivers for them. The salvation there is that Vuescan, a very good third-party outfit, does publish those missing drivers.

 

Epson has several models of flatbed scanners that will accomodate both photos and negatives/transparencies, at varying resolutions. Two models, the V700 (~$600) and V750-M ($~850) can go up to 6400dpi optical resolution with sufficiently wide dynamic range to capture highlight and shadow detail well. Both models provide support Digital ICE utilities included in the software; those utilities provide dust and scratch removal, grain management, restoration of faded colors, and recovery of shadow detail that can be important sometimes in working with old Kodachrome slides or underexposed images. The primary justification for the V750-M's higher price is that its lens system incorporates higher quality optical glass for more exact reproduction of color and capture of finest detail.

 

Continuing to babble - Perhaps you already know this, but just in case, a 2400dpi scan of a 35mm neg or slide will yield a respectable print up to 8x10. There's a handy piece of software called Perfect Resize (formerly Genuine Fractals), from onOne Software that uses a better resizing algorithm than Photoshop's bicubic. With it, you can enlarge an image more without loss of image quality than in Photoshop. It works standalone, or as a Photoshop plugin. The standard edition costs $159.95 from the publisher's web site.

Hi Robert--thanks for your insightful and detailed reply--its very helpful. Maybe a flatbed would work, though the ability to work from the original negative/transparency is tempting (and thus the V700/V750). But either way, I think i'll go with your overall point--that, given volume and other reasons, it may be better to buy something than sending out jobs and here and there. thanks.

You're welcome.

 

Virtually all the photos on my web site from before 2004 were scanned from negatives or slides. If you have film that was shot with a good camera and lens, working from slides or negatives is way superior to working from a machine print; often machine prints aren't entirely faithful to the colors in the original neg or slide and their permanence isn't as high as custom archival prints done by a good technician. Even negs and slides will degrade over time under the best storage conditions, but at least you have less adjustment/correction to make and you'll get more of the fine details. BTW, Kodachrome is pretty amazing if stored in a cool, dry place - especially the old ISO 10 stuff. I have some slides that are fifty years old and still rich in color, and the grain is very fine.

 

Good luck with whatever approach you choose.