Getting films scanned.....

Steve-B

Steve-B

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I recently blew the dust from my old fujica ST 801 and after replacing the light seals and mirror buffer, I run a roll of colour film through the camera..previously last used in the 80's :eek:

This morning I had a hour spare so I dropped the film into my local developing lab and paid for a quick turn a round, The object of the exercise was just to see if the camera was working ok and keeping all of the light out, I asked the guys " if the film come out ok could you scan the negs as well as prints so as I can digitalise them and do what ever is needed in photoshop " so thats what they did..

Anyway picked the pictures up and hour later and yep they have come out ok.....so I put the disc into the computer and tranfered the images to the computer in readiness to open them in photoshop for a look and find out they are jpegs sized at about 1908 x 1272 pxls which gives a 6"x 4" image and a file size of 1.4 to 1.9 meg..

My question is that being as I have never had any film digitalised before so is this the sizes I should expect ( I was hoping for bigger files and TIFFS instead of jpegs)..

Also when I questioned the guys about digitalising Black and white , if I developed the films ( as this is why I have resureccted the old st801 ) the guy told me not to bother as it is now a better option to just shoot in colour and they will develop and convert them.. Is this correct ??

Sorry for the long post, but after not using film for so long I didn'know what to expect..

I would be greatful for any info...cheers, Steve.
 
Take a look in the 'Film Developing in the UK' thread at the top of the page - mail order is the most competitive way to get decent prices and good quality these days.

With scanning, most places usually do about 6 mp as a high res CD because you can make 10"x8" at 300dpi although most will do larger files for more if you ask them. Usually these are Jpegs so that they can fit them onto a CD but once again if you ask they may do TIFF's for more but by this point it will be getting fairly expensive!

With B&W its your choice, I prefer shooting real B&W film as I can develop it myself and there are all the different types of B&W from the ultra slow, extremely fined grained ISO 25 to the super fast, coarse grained ISO 3200 films. You will have to do any developing through mail order though as pretty much nowhere on the high street does B&W developing on site anymore and they will just send it off and make you wait a week or so whilst with most decent mail order labs its back within 5 days.
 
Yeah that's about right for the cheapest option scans, i used to take mine to Jessops before i scanned my own stuff and they charged £2 extra for scans up to 6x8" (they did it by print size not resolution), and £4 extra for scans up to 8x12" i think which were in the 8-10MP range but still JPEG.

The only time i ever got TIFF's back was when i gave them slide film as they send it off to a lab but the scans were like an extra £1 for the stuff they sent off which was weird but that was medium format as well.
 
Metro Colour Labs who I use offer high res scans for £3.50 when developing. This is an 18mb file - note this is the image size, not the file size (i.e. the amount of room it takes up on the disc, but the image size). From memory, images are about the same dimensions as files off my old 6mp Nikon D70. Peak Imaging do bigger, but it'll cost you! I've no experience of any other processors.
 
Thanks for the info Samuel, Morinaka & Andy..I think I will probably end up developing my own black and white and then sending them off to get them scanned.... I have got to be honest I was just so pleased the old Fujica St 801 still worked after doing the light seals and mirror buffer, And even dropping in a new silver battery for the light meter ( only bit of electronics on the camera ) made that fully functional.....will stick a couple of my test shots in the photo's from film section.

I wont tell the missus yet, But I can see a more modern film camera on the horizon as well..been looking at a Nikon F5, any views on them..

Steve.
 
Steve-B said:
....
Also when I questioned the guys about digitalising Black and white , if I developed the films ( as this is why I have resureccted the old st801 ) the guy told me not to bother as it is now a better option to just shoot in colour and they will develop and convert them.. Is this correct ??....
Click to expand...

That sounds strange advice - surely the main reason for shooting b&w is to be able to actually shoot with b&w film
 
If you are thinking of going for a Nikon the F100 may be a better buy. 90% of the F5 at about a third of the cost, I love mine for days when I want to shoot film without the fuss, its like a digital really but with film.

Andy
 
The F5 has got to be one of the ugliest cameras of all time lol.
 
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