Pulpit Rock, inside of the Stone Church in Dover, NY. Hard to tell from this photo but all those rocks had a layer of ice on them and the footing was quite treacherous. Melissa was convinced I’d slip and concuss myself in an icy stream far from help.
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but i think there must be a treasure chest with a health upgrade and a few potions in the back part of the cave that is obscured by shadows
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I could have posted in “Pulled Through the Fourth Wall” yeah
edit: (What there really is, is a little waterfall, and that’s still pretty cool)
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I’ve got a shit ton of black and white film from back in the day when I was shooting on Pentax and Minolta. I’d like to get it all scanned in digitally so I can work with the negatives more easily, and so I can stop worrying about degradation. Issue is my film is already developed and cut into binder-length strips, some even shorter. From what I gather this is going to make it really expensive, and some places might not even want to deal. I also have a feeling that I probably don’t need/want high-res scans of every negative, and it would be nice to save money by only getting scans of the shots/series I want, but it’s obviously hard to know which ones I do want until I have at least a basic scan, and again, not sure whether selecting specific shots from cut strips is a complexity your average photo shop will want to deal with.
I know I can get digital scanners for “reasonable” prices, at least, reasonable when compared to how much I’d be spending on having someone do this for me anyways, given the amount I have. A lot. But from what I understand, the stuff that is affordable and approachable for hobbyists is not as high quality as the serious industry stuff. I’m only doing this once, so I’d like it done right.
Does anyone know of a really good, high quality photoshop that is willing to work with people on custom pricing and logistics as I mentioned above? I’m in the NYC metro area. I’d be ok with mailing stuff too, but I am guessing that would make it harder and less likely to find someone willing to give a personal touch on the work and pricing as explained.
Alternatively, if one of you fine folks happens to have a high quality negative drum scanner… I’d be willing to work something out.
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I suspect this could be the biggest stumbling block. I could see someone wanting to charge you a lot more for the extra labor this would entail. I think you’d actually wind up spending less just to have the whole shebang scanned so the technician could basically just go on autopilot and scan the strips without thinking about it.
Your query made me do some Googling and, for myself, I might actually pick one of these up to play with because I have some old negatives that I scanned a million years ago but I don’t know where those scans are now. And the reviews mostly seem very complimentary.
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i think the best intersection between cost-effectiveness and time-effectiveness for people with a lot of negatives to digitize is to get a cheaper batch-feed scanner like the one mikey posted, scan everything yourself relatively low-res (maybe like 1200 dpi) and have those on file so you can see what the pics look like. they won’t look great; the scanner is not going to do an amazing job inverting color negatives, for example, but they’ll be workable. good enough to show the relatives, etc.
after you’ve done that, anything you’ve scanned that you want in high enough quality to make big prints of, you can send out to have scanned individually and it will probably run $20-40 per frame. i would not advise paying for drum scans, that’s like doing food delivery in an f1 car. you will end up with a 1gb tiff file of grandma cookin beans!
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Ya, I was looking at those cheaper home scanners, but I looked at comparisons and the difference between those and a proper drum scanner is huge. Having said that, this is on black and white so maybe it won’t matter as much?
I kind of want to just get this done once and for all and then never worry again. Which is why I was hoping to avoid asking for a cheap scan of everything, and then having to go and get specific high resolution scans, while my film continues to age.
I might just be overthinking all this, as I do about lots of things.
I think my recommendation will just be “find a place that won’t charge you a bunch extra for having cut film strips, have them scan the whole set and sort through the images later”.
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how many rolls of film do you have to scan? the difference between anything and drum scanning is huge but drum scanning is also like $30-100+ per frame of film! i don’t know what kind of volume you’re working with but you could expect to pay like $1500 per roll of 35mm film to get drum scans done.
Semi-related:
I sent two rolls of slide film to this lab https://thedarkroom.com/
They processed the film, cut/mounted my slides, and provided scans of relatively decent quality (what they refer to as “standard”) for $36 a roll, plus $5.95 for return shipping. I recall their turnaround being pretty quick too.
I was happy with how they turned out, I’ll use them again. Here’s some details on their scanning services for already-developed film
i use the darkroom too for my film stuff, I like them
Oh. Yea, I knew it would be expensive, but had no idea it would be that expensive. That’s right out then. I was hoping I could just get everything scanned, and then not even be that upset if all my film spontaneously caught on fire, but it seems like that is an unattainable dream.
When you say cut and mounted your slides, can you elaborate?
I guess at this point I’m looking between one of these DIY methods, or just paying someone to do it in bulk for me. Thanks all for the suggestions and pointers so far.
So for slide film specifically, they will cut each individual positive out and mount them in the little slides so they can be put in projectors etc. A bit more labor intensive then just the cut film strips for negatives, so I feel like they were still pretty inexpensive.
Ah, alright, gotcha. That makes sense. I was imagining/hoping they would do some neat packaging on my negatives to get them out of binder sheets and into a more proper storage system, but it sounds like that is a project I will have to take on myself.
good avatar / post vibe synergy!
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I went to a zoo and this random chipmunk just running around the grounds is maybe the best picture I got
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