Asda vs Epson

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Adrian
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I have always been reasonably happy with the ASDA C41 Dev and Scan service. It's cheap and generally the developing has been OK. Occasionaly the Ipswich branch manages to cut the negs in a somewhat random way, unlike Norwich where they always precise, but I none the less tend to use these two stores for all my Agfa Vista C41.

I have however recently started to rescan some of the of the negs scanned by ASDA and I think my V500 does a better job. It tends to be the negs where the exposure might be a little off. On negs that are perfectly exposed the ASDA scans are OK I think. The ASDA ones are a bit sharper, perhaps too much so.

Below are a few pairs of scans to illustrate the point. They have pretty much the same LR4 preset treatment. The Epson ones are also full frame given that the ASDA machine crops to a 3x4 aspect ratio I think. No. 1 & 2. and Kodacolor Gold 100 and No.3 is Agfa Vista 200.

I wonder have others using ASDA found they are rescanning some negs or is this just me? It only costs a £1 for the scan so it acts as a sort of electronic contact sheet I suppose. I'd be keen to here what other do regarding C41 though?

Any way a bit of a Bank Holiday ponder!

St James Mill, Norwich courtesy of ASDA
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St James Mill, Norwich courtesy of Epson
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Postbox and City Hall courtesy of ASDA
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Postbox and City Hall courtesy of Epson
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Free Tea in Ely courtesy of ASDA
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Free Tea in Ely courtesy of Epson
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The Asda scans certainly lack the subtlety of the V500 scans, they look ok in isolation but side by side shows the lack of quality.
 
Earlier in the year I re-scanned some b&w films done by ASDA in Edinburgh, and I was much happier with the result. In fact, I was planning a thread showing the Asda scans, then done on my Plustek with Silverfast and Vuescan, but never got round to it (maybe because the Vuescan copy is demo and the scans look awful with the watermark all over them).

The advantage of getting an Asda scan, as you say, is you can decide which shots have potential and give them some attention. I find I'm hopeless at assessing negatives, so end up scanning the lot if I'm doing them by hand.

I also prefer shop scans for C41 colour, as Silverfast 6 is pretty rubbish on some of the Negafix presets. It doesn't have Fuji C200 at all (neither does Vuescan), and the colours can be pretty horrid. So that rules out Vista! I keep promising myself to buy ColorPerfect and Elements, but on closer reading it looked like a very large amount of faff to get good results!
 
The Asda scan just shows a classic mini-lab oversharpening of pictures, all automatic. I also find that minilabs tend to go for a colour profile that has a bit of a "vintage film colour" look to it, the colours people expect to see after having a roll of film developed in the 21st century (despite many modern films having a similar full palette to digital).

The Epson scans would look as "sharp" as the Asda ones, even more so, if they had as much sharpening applied to them as the Asda ones have. But I think it looks unnatural - look at the shadow line of the building reflected in the water, it looks all washed out and a very odd pattern.
 
Yep the Asda ones of over sharpened, but you can get back to the V500 scans by just reducing contrast in Photoshop this brings out more shadow detail and reduces the sharpening.
Nearly all my Asda scans need work in Photoshop as the scans are probably set by the engineers for Joe public.... 6X4"s prints.
 
As I pointed out in a previous thread on scanning, the fact that almost all of us have scanners isn't just for economic reasons... and says a lot about lab scanning.
 
Interesting, and timely, given that I've just taken delivery of a V500 and am giving it a workout with all my 120 negs.
I had been wondering whether to carry on letting Studio5 scan my 35mm negs for me as Mary takes good care of me. But then I do contribute a significant portion of her wages!
 
freecom2 said:
As I pointed out in a previous thread on scanning, the fact that almost all of us have scanners isn't just for economic reasons... and says a lot about lab scanning.
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H'mm for 35mm, it beats me why you guys want to f*rt around scanning, it's so boring.....you aint going to beat a £20,000 Fuji frontier machine even though it's low scan, and even if you wack your flatbed up to 9600dpi you will not get any\much more detail (over an Asda scan) just less pixel breakup which of course helps for those larger prints or crops if you want them.
If all you are going to do is post your shots on forums then an Asda scan does the job and only needs adjusting in Photoshop (or similar program) by reducing gamma to about 70 and reducing contrast by about 20 + (to suit) .......takes a few seconds for your winners (the losers can stay as they are).
I've roughly seventy folders of negs and scans from Asda and Tesco and am happy, more time for taking photos...of course if you have a carp Tesco or Asda nearby you don't have much choice.


Asda dev and scan, adjusted as above by me:-
 
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If all I shot was stuff I don't care about then Adsa would be fine but if I add scanning costs to the price I pay to the labs I use it would make shooting film much less economic.
 
RaglanSurf said:
If all I shot was stuff I don't care about then Adsa would be fine but if I add scanning costs to the price I pay to the labs I use it would make shooting film much less economic.
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Well my shots are important to me but I'm only an amateur...;) and for a £10 camera and £4 zoom, OOD Fuji film and Asda or Tesco dev and scan with adjustments in Photoshop....shots can be very good, and wouldn't think many people would say the're carp.

 
excalibur2 said:
H'mm for 35mm, it beats me why you guys want to f*rt around scanning, it's so boring.....you aint going to beat a £20,000 Fuji frontier machine even though it's low scan, and even if you wack your flatbed up to 9600dpi you will not get any\much more detail (over an Asda scan) just less pixel breakup which of course helps for those larger prints or crops if you want them.
If all you are going to do is post your shots on forums then an Asda scan does the job and only needs adjusting in Photoshop (or similar program) by reducing gamma to about 70 and reducing contrast by about 20 + (to suit) .......takes a few seconds for your winners (the losers can stay as they are).
I've roughly seventy folders of negs and scans from Asda and Tesco and am happy, more time for taking photos...of course if you have a carp Tesco or Asda nearby you don't have much choice.
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Brian this is interesting. I have in the past worked on the principle that the V500 can't compete with the scanners that ASDA use. However for some negs try as I might I just can't get a decent image when tweaked in Lightroom or Elements. Now that might be just down to my lack of skills with post processing. As noted in my initial post if I get the exposure spot on in the camera the ASDA scans are usually OK and I stick with those.

But for me I spend far less time rescanning than playing about in photoshop, as stated I am pretty poor at it too which doesn't help!

Horses for courses and I guess we all settle on a work flow that works for us.

Thanks everyone else too for the comments.
 
Jao said:
Brian this is interesting. I have in the past worked on the principle that the V500 can't compete with the scanners that ASDA use. However for some negs try as I might I just can't get a decent image when tweaked in Lightroom or Elements. Now that might be just down to my lack of skills with post processing. As noted in my initial post if I get the exposure spot on in the camera the ASDA scans are usually OK and I stick with those.

But for me I spend far less time rescanning than playing about in photoshop, as stated I am pretty poor at it too which doesn't help!

Horses for courses and I guess we all settle on a work flow that works for us.

Thanks everyone else too for the comments.
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Well Adrian I've a V750 and 4180 and sometimes I too can't get the colours right either home scanning or comparing with a Asda scan AND using Photoshop :shrug: and I call them unscannable negs (well by me and does include very old negs).
But once you know from experience the scanning results from your local Asda or whoever, then you know exactly how to quickly adjust them in Photoshop (and it doesn't take me too long as I don't have many winners ;) )..for me my local Asda scans are too bright and contrasty and many times too sharp. I suppose I could just let them (or a special lab) dev the neg, but that means boring scanning at home...and more amusement to the lurking digital guys to just produce a shot :lol:
 
I think I will continue to use the Asda scan and dev service it is a cheap and I have no qualms about the processing. I will have a bit more of a go in post processing the asda scans to see what I can pull out and use the V500 when that process does not yield the results I am looking for. This will sound sad but I do actually find the process of scanning at home quite therapeutic and I actually enjoy it. Even the cloning of of dust has a certain satisfaction!
 
Jao said:
I think I will continue to use the Asda scan and dev service it is a cheap and I have no qualms about the processing. I will have a bit more of a go in post processing the asda scans to see what I can pull out and use the V500 when that process does not yield the results I am looking for. This will sound sad but I do actually find the process of scanning at home quite therapeutic and I actually enjoy it. Even the cloning of of dust has a certain satisfaction!
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Well I think scanning about half of my old negs and a few pos going back to the 1960's ruined it for me, although I enjoy scanning some medium format shots where I can choose looking at the prints.

Bronica ETRS 75mm, V750, dev IIRC at Jessops about 10 years ago.
 
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Well I thought I would leave this alone, however, I have to say V500 is so much better, it is not even worth the £1.00 to have any scan by the supermarket.
 
I think that if you are having your films processed at the supermarket you may as well pay the extra £1 for a scan and use the scan as a digital contact sheet. You can then use your home scanner to scan in your "keepers".
 
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