Recommendations for a 35mm negative scanning service?

Ash_Pole

I have around 1,000 old colour negatives to scan.

facade

pixave get good reviews on trustpilot and are suspiciously cheap - like 30p a negative, whereas the "pro" services charge £1.

I certainly wouldn't hand inspect and then scan a negative for 30p!

With 1000 if you have infinite time it might be worth getting a batchfeed scanner, like the Pacific Image Powerfilm and doing them yourself, then you could sell the scanner on afterwards.

Batchfeed scanners are very rare, the old Nikon Coolscan V will do 1 strip at a time, so you'd have to reload every half hour or so and it would take a couple of weeks to scan 1000 negatives.  They still fetch good money though, and you need to buy additional software for windows as Nikon stopped supporting them in about 2004

Neil_Jones

facade said:

you need to buy additional software for windows as Nikon stopped supporting them in about 2004

Windows has had built in scanning software since the days of Vista.  It should be able to work with any scanner (in theory) providing Windows knows what to do with the device.

For other fine tuning or scanner specific options, maybe, but just getting something into the computer in some form whether its A4, A6, 35mm or printed on a leaf, you shouldn't need any extra software.

cymruchris

Another vote for buy a scanner (maybe used) spend a day or two doing it and then sell the scanner on... You'll lose very little. Don't go for the £30 amazon ebay jobbies - make sure it's a decent one. There's always a market for good second hand scanners for people doing exactly what you're doing.

wongataa

Ash_Pole said:

I have around 1,000 old colour negatives to scan.

Are you sure you need all 1000 scanned?  I would go through them all and determine how many you actually want scanned.  If you have already done this fair enough.

EssexExile

I used a Plustek OpticFilm scanner for all my slides and negatives then passed it on when finished.

facade

If you buy a scanner, it must be batch feed for 1000 pictures.

I have a cheap negative scanner.

You load the negative strip in a carrier so the bars come at the frame edges and then push the carrier in until it clicks, then scan (and wait, and wait) then push through to the next click and scan....

The novelty wears off after about a dozen scans!

A decent scan will take 2-5 minutes per frame, you don't want to be sitting watching that.

[Deleted User]

I bought a PlusTek OpticFilm 7600 SE and use the Silverfast software with it and have been blown away with the results from scanning slides from 60 years ago, will also do negatives.

Highly recommend, bought mine 2nd hand, when I've finished digitising I'll sell it so the overall cost will be minimal.

It uses infra red scanning to remove scratches and dust - really impressed with how good this is.

The slides had deteriorated over time colour wise and there was built in compensation and adjustment according to the brand and type that restored them back to original colours as best as possible.

facade

The Plustek Optifilm 135i autofeeds. but doesn't come with the silverfast, or any built in dust & scratch removal. It is also a 3600dpi scanner. The older scanners like the Nikon Coolscan V claim low resolutions but these are genuine optical resolutions, the Coolscan is 4000dpi. Modern scanners claim digital resolutions of 7200dpi or more, but they just make up half the pixels.

cymruchris

facade said:

A decent scan will take 2-5 minutes per frame, you don't want to be sitting watching that.

That's a bit OTT - I scanned my family's old slides and negatives using a Plustek scanner, and got decent, useable scans with resulting Jpegs of around 10mb (enough for the screen or a decent print) for probably 20-30 seconds a frame. Most people just want to digitise the memory rather than print it to a billboard, so don't need the highest res scan possible. I went through a couple of thousand slides and negatives over a few days. 

MouldyOldDough

I scanned around 1000 slides  and 500 + negatives using a Zennox 5MP 35mm film slide scanner purchased from Amazon for £35 - it does an excellent job for the money - it took literally a second for every scan