Where to get negatives scanned in Dublin?

BeautifulLoser

Hi,

Just wondering if anyone can recommend somewhere in Dublin I can get some negatives scanned? I don't want to invest in a scanner myself as I don't shoot film (yet .

It's for my wedding photos so I don't mind paying a once off premium for quality/reliability.

Thanks!

BrendanRyan

Theres a few places and options to consider, very high end would be fire, they do drum scans but would be costly, similiar to them would be inspirational arts or exhibit A studios, could be very pricey depending on how many negs you got.

if you've got a lot of scans to do the gallery of photography have a digital darkroom with a hasselblad scanner, thats a virtual drum scan, they quality is stunning. As far as I remember it 75 quid for an hour, but if you don't know how to use the scanner i think its another 75 for an hours tuition, but im sure you could get some scanning done in that time aswell.

Another option would be to approach a year 3/4 student who would be happy with a nixer im sure, and would have the facilities to make good scans. Don't approach a tutor though, they would not like that!

Hope that helps
Brendan Ryan

www.brendanryanphotography.com

dazftw

If you plan on shooting film in the future buy yourself a scanner, save yourself a lot of hassle in the long run.

I **THINK** there's a place called Ruared in Dublin that **CAN** scan film? I've seen it mentioned on here a few times.

stcstc

rua red have a hasstleblad scanner that you can rent the use of and its mad cheap, like a few euros for an hr

Heebie

Anyplace with a Fuji Frontier system should be able to do decent scans for you. (Not nearly the quality of drum scans or a fancy Hasselblad.. but not anywhere near as expensive either.)

BeautifulLoser

Thanks for the replies everyone!

I'd be very curious to see the difference in quality between the Hasselblad and the Fuji Frontier. I think I'll get a couple of the negatives scanned using each any maybe run off a few prints too and then see how big the difference is and whether or not it's worth going the extra mile for the Hasselblad..

sambora

The Camera Centre in Grafton St / Liffey St scan negatives.. Quality is pretty decent for the price!

Captain Flaps

Having worked in a fuji lab with a frontier for 4 years and also spent hundreds of hours last year with a hasselblad scanner in college (with mr Brendan Ryan who posted above), I'll try and give you a reasonable breakdown of the options.

In terms of cost/quality, the fuji lab comes out on top. They'll scan your negatives at about 1800x1200 pixels (240ppi) to CD for 3 euro per roll. While 1800x1200 doesn't sound that huge, it's more than big enough to make some nice prints anywhere up to 8x10, I wouldn't go much bigger than that with them. This can usually be done within the hour depending on how busy the lab is and how many rolls you have.

The only real downside with lab scanning is that neither you nor the person doing the scanning has any control over the exposure or levels in the image. The Frontier software does a fairly good job of averaging out exposures so the resulting files are uniformly bright, but if you want to make sure things are perfect (white levels of the dress etc), the lab may be a little bit limiting.

The Hasselblad option will definitely give you cleaner, better looking, really high resolution results, but boy will you pay for it in time, energy and cash! Both the Gallery of Photography in Temple Bar and Rua Red in Tallaght will rent out space at their Hassie scanners, but depending on how many pics you have that need scanning you'll need to consider the fact that proper negative scanning takes a lot of time. You do a pre scan of your negative which takes 30 seconds - 1 minute, then you tinker with the levels/white balance/exposure sliders and curves until you're happy, then you make the final scan. The whole process can take anywhere between 5 and 10 minutes from start to finish (depending on the resolution you choose), per negative, so you can see how hundreds of wedding photos might be a bit rough to do this way.

When I was scanning my graduate project on the hassie, I managed to get myself to 16 images an hour, and that was working flat out. Granted, those were medium format scans and the resolution was for A1 prints, but it's the same process for 35mm.

You do get the quality from proper scanning but really the only benefits are the total control and the huge resolution. If you're happy enough to trust the computer and not print massive pictures, the lab is the way to go.

So, my suggestion would be this: get everything scanned in a Fuji lab, bring the CD home and decide which ones you really want done properly, then bring those negs to the proper scanner. You'll save a bundle of money, not to mention time and energy!

Heebie

This isn't correct. The operator of a Fuji Frontier, actually has a lot of leeway (+/- up to 5 steps in "density" the unit of exposure used on Fuji lab equipment) as well as being able to adjust the color (in steps of "density" on a per-color basis of up to +/- 5 steps.. adjusting all three colors to +5 and adjusting the master density to +5 effectively gives you +10), and adjust the levels used by the sharpening filters, and to set the final destination size. (It will natively scan up to 10" x 15" at 303dpi. Most labs scan at 4x6 @300dpi resulting in 1200x1800 resolution, but the scanner can do 3,000x4500 pixels.)

It definitely has weakenesses though.. on grainy films (such as high-speed films with speeds like 1600-6400 etc..) the sharpening filters, if active, will sharpen the film grain & make a right mess... it looks massively horrible if you don't remember to turn off all the sharpening with such films. (T-Max 3200 and Ilford Delta 3200 both seem particularly bad for this.)

I believe there are filtering options for shadows, midtones, and highlights are separately adjustable, with available values of off, soft, medium, or strong.
The most common filter settings would be "All Soft" or "All Strong" which are macros that adjust all 3 sharpening filters to the same value.

Many labs never teach their technicians this level of detail on handling the machine, or even lock their techs out of these features. (Fewer controls means less time making adjustments.. less time making adjustments means higher productivity at the sacrifice of some quality.) Most labs tend to run something like a Frontier in full-auto mode for scanning which is very, very sad. (I obviously worked in a lab where we didn't. I was up-to-speed on the operation of the Frontier, but I did mostly digital imaging of other sorts, as well as the network & systems administration.)

Captain Flaps wrote: »

The only real downside with lab scanning is that neither you nor the person doing the scanning has any control over the exposure or levels in the image. The Frontier software does a fairly good job of averaging out exposures so the resulting files are uniformly bright, but if you want to make sure things are perfect (white levels of the dress etc), the lab may be a little bit limiting.

BeautifulLoser

Captain Flaps wrote: »

So, my suggestion would be this: get everything scanned in a Fuji lab, bring the CD home and decide which ones you really want done properly, then bring those negs to the proper scanner. You'll save a bundle of money, not to mention time and energy!

Good idea. I probably will only want to do extra large prints on a handful of them anyway..