Photo by Cory Treadway

So you've been making selects from the archives and now you need some film scanned. And because you're uploading 125MB files to PhotoShelter you need GOOD scans. Do you buy a scanner and do them yourself? Or which lab should you go to? What about those online places? Let Dan, Jenny, Tan-ya and Ciel from SugarHill Works demystify for you...

There is a wide variety of scanning services available out there, and choosing one can be daunting. The challenge is to find a good balance between quality, service, and cost. First, let's talk about cost. There are websites that offer scans at extremely low prices, like $0.19 per frame, however the biggest file size you'll get is 7-12MB. Plus, you mail your film to a US address which half the time ships your film overseas - turnaround on getting your negs back can be 4-6 weeks. Not good. Also available are your drug stores, supermarkets, and 1-Hour joints. Again, scans here tend to be very cheap, but the scans are made on an automated machine and are generally only suitable for the web or a very small print. The cost of a film scanner can range from a few hundred bucks to $50,000 and more. The cheaper (under $3000) film scanners will produce results that are not a whole lot better than the drug store - except you get to customize each scan yourself and can achieve bigger file sizes.

That leaves Imacon 'glassless' drum scanners, which cost about $20,000 and regular drum scanners which can cost up to and over $50,000... so unless you are scanning and selling a LOT of images, most people employ the services of a good digital lab. Among the full service pro shops, prices can range from $40 to over $100 for a 50MB scan, with some places charging a dollar per megabyte. Smaller, boutique-style digital houses tend to start scanning prices at around $15-$30 for the same 50MB file.

Scanning technology can vary widely, but all decent scanners put light through your negatives and capture the image on a CCD, similar to those found in digital cameras. The quality and 'dynamic range,' or DMAX, of the CCD has a lot to do with the scanner's abilities. Most consumer-grade scanners scan with a DMAX of 3.2-3.8, which causes them to have problems with noise in the shadows that require time-consuming multi-pass scans and/or retouching. Professional scanners have DMAX values of up to 4.9, meaning they can get even the slightest shadow detail out of the darkest parts of a transparency. Of course, to be sure you're seeing what the scanner is scanning, you have to be working in a fully calibrated color environment using Eizo CG monitors or similar.