Scan Cafe
If you’re one of those people (like me) who started shooting photos back in the dark ages (i.e. pre-digital) then you’ve undoubtedly got a whole bunch of pictures stuffed away in some drawer somewhere that rarely get looked at. And in fact one of the best things about having pictures in digital form is that I actually go back and look at them a lot more often than I do with any of my old film prints. So for a long time now I’ve been contemplating the idea of somehow scanning all of my old photos or negatives into the computer. But what method to use? I bought a flatbed scanner that had an attachment to feed a (small) stack of prints through it – not the best image quality but better than nothing. Unfortunately it proved rather unreliable and I gave up on it after a few batches.
But then I heard about a company called ScanCafe (www.scancafe.com). They seem to have two things going for them. #1 is that they scan the original negative and even do a color-balance and digital dirt-removal pass on the image. (They scan with nice Nikon scanners at 3000dpi). And #2 is that they’re reasonably priced. 19¢ per negative and you don’t have to pay for any images you decide you don’t like (up to half of what you have them scan). The procedure for making this happen is dead simple. Grab all your negatives from whatever drawer/shoebox/dungeon you’ve got them stored in. Shove them into envelopes (which you can label however you want and ScanCafe will put into equivalent directories once scanned). Then tell ScanCafe approximately how many you’re sending (via their website) and print out the UPS shipping label they provide you and mail them all off. And then wait a few weeks until you hear back from them saying your scans are done. At which point you go online and pick the ones you don’t want to pay for and they send you everything else on DVD-ROM’s.
Now, admittedly, the thought of taking all of one’s precious negatives and shipping them off into the void is a bit scary, but ScanCafe’s procedures seem to be good and their track-record is (at least according to them, and I couldn’t find anybody to contradict this) is exemplary. And really, none of my old photos are going to win any awards anyway…
So I decided to go for it. If the worst-case scenario happens and my UPS package is torn open by rabid acetate-sniffing German Shepherd police dogs somewhere along the way I figure I’ve still got the prints. And if everything goes according to plan then I’ve now got everything in digital format.
So I bagged and boxed everything up as they specified and dropped it into the mail. The negatives (all 4000 frames of them) made it to ScanCafe’s offices (they actually go through San Francisco and then are shipped off to India for scanning) and they were eventually scanned (took a couple of months though) and then thumbnails show up online so I can pick the ones I don’t want to pay for . (Which in my case there were about 300 of them that just weren’t worth having – completely blown-out or non-exposed frames).
The DVD-burning process then started, which took another month or so (I’m assuming that if you send of a smaller batch this whole procedure would go a bit faster) and eventually a box showed up at my door and (most importantly) I had all of my original negatives back, none the worse for wear. And in the same box were 5 DVD’s filled with the scanned images. How do they look? Really good, actually (ignoring the really ugly 80′s clothing styles and bad high-school haircuts of course). They’re all high-resolution (4074 by 2761) and generally the color balance is good (although some of the older stuff does indeed look faded. There are some tools in various packages that can restore this a bit more and maybe at some point I’ll check them out). There are very few dirt-and-dust hits on the images although there were a couple of negatives that I hadn’t taken very good care of that still show some scratches. Not introduced by ScanCafe – they were there when I sent the negatives over. All-in-all I’m very happy with the service. Yeah, it took a few months all told but there were quite a few negatives to be scanned so I don’t mind that. And now I’ve got images online that would otherwise just be sitting in a drawer, deteriorating into oblivion, unviewed and unloved.
Trackbacks
- Old Scans… « Digital Composting
- Old Scans… « Digital Composting
- Beautiful damage… « VFXer. Visual Effects Journal.
- Beautiful damage… « VFXer. Visual Effects Journal.
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Very cool, I’ll have to check these guys out
Very cool, I’ll have to check these guys out
Great post. Does anyone know of any similar service offered here in Australia?
I’m a new listener and have been enjoying the show a lot, including the past episodes and the videos.
Great post. Does anyone know of any similar service offered here in Australia?
I’m a new listener and have been enjoying the show a lot, including the past episodes and the videos.
Ron,
I have mostly black and white negatives, tri-x and ilford 3200 mostly, scan cafe charges considerably more for these negatives. Did you have any b/w negatives scanned? Are there companies that can scan black and white at less cost. The number of negatives I have would cost about the same as a good film scanner using scan cafe.
Thanks,
John
Ron,
I have mostly black and white negatives, tri-x and ilford 3200 mostly, scan cafe charges considerably more for these negatives. Did you have any b/w negatives scanned? Are there companies that can scan black and white at less cost. The number of negatives I have would cost about the same as a good film scanner using scan cafe.
Thanks,
John
@john – I did have some B&W stuff scanned and it turned out fine but yeah, it’s considerably more expensive. For the total cost of all the photos I had scanned I probably could’ve bought a good scanner too but I don’t for a minute regret having someone else do it… don’t forget to factor in the value of your own time.
@john – I did have some B&W stuff scanned and it turned out fine but yeah, it’s considerably more expensive. For the total cost of all the photos I had scanned I probably could’ve bought a good scanner too but I don’t for a minute regret having someone else do it… don’t forget to factor in the value of your own time.
Just a quick tip. If you have negatives that are badly damaged you can take them to a professional photo developer…not certain what they are called now. But I had a few that I used to use regularly. Anyway I would order one print and a copy neg and send them the negative. They would do what they could to save it. Mostly at no charge except for the copy neg and print I would order. I usually would only do this for something that I thought was important to save…
I am seriously considering the scan cafe service as I have a ton of photos from the college dorm days. I will try to send something off by next weekend cause my other alternative is to buy a scanner and get to work.
Just a quick tip. If you have negatives that are badly damaged you can take them to a professional photo developer…not certain what they are called now. But I had a few that I used to use regularly. Anyway I would order one print and a copy neg and send them the negative. They would do what they could to save it. Mostly at no charge except for the copy neg and print I would order. I usually would only do this for something that I thought was important to save…
I am seriously considering the scan cafe service as I have a ton of photos from the college dorm days. I will try to send something off by next weekend cause my other alternative is to buy a scanner and get to work.
Any idea if you can send prints if you don’t have the negatives? This sounds like a great alternative to spending months in front of a flatbed scanner.
Any idea if you can send prints if you don’t have the negatives? This sounds like a great alternative to spending months in front of a flatbed scanner.
Can you tell us what the total time from the original boxing and ups shipping to getting the DVDs and negatives returned minus the time you took to reject 300 of them?
I am planning on sending off a couple thousand negatives soon in batches of 500 or so to be done as I can afford them.
Big thanks for your review and information.
@Steve – yes, they’ll scan photos, slides and negatives. Their website gives more details but it’s listed as 27cents each.
@Steve – yes, they’ll scan photos, slides and negatives. Their website gives more details but it’s listed as 27cents each.
@dave – I placed the order January 3, which entailed going online and telling them what I wanted to have done. I boxed the negatives up and mailed them a day or two later and ScanCafe reported receiving them on Jan7. On Feb23 I got an email telling me that the scans were done and at that point I spent a day or two culling out the ones I didn’t want (picking thumbnails on a website). On March14 they mailed the DVD’s to me and I got them a couple of days after that.
@dave – I placed the order January 3, which entailed going online and telling them what I wanted to have done. I boxed the negatives up and mailed them a day or two later and ScanCafe reported receiving them on Jan7. On Feb23 I got an email telling me that the scans were done and at that point I spent a day or two culling out the ones I didn’t want (picking thumbnails on a website). On March14 they mailed the DVD’s to me and I got them a couple of days after that.
Also I just uploaded one of the ScanCafe scans to http://www.flickr.com/photos/ronbrinkmann/2449038153/ if you want to check out the quality of it. Click on the ‘all sizes’ icon above the image to see full-rez. This is a photo from 1991 so don’t even bother asking me details about filmstock. The camera was an older Pentax with, I suspect, a very consumer-level lens.
Also I just uploaded one of the ScanCafe scans to http://www.flickr.com/photos/ronbrinkmann/2449038153/ if you want to check out the quality of it. Click on the ‘all sizes’ icon above the image to see full-rez. This is a photo from 1991 so don’t even bother asking me details about filmstock. The camera was an older Pentax with, I suspect, a very consumer-level lens.
I decided to give them a try. I shipped off 200 or so negatives as a test. Their site lists them as receiving them on April 10th and estimate they will be online to cull on May 7th. We will see.
I decided to give them a try. I shipped off 200 or so negatives as a test. Their site lists them as receiving them on April 10th and estimate they will be online to cull on May 7th. We will see.
Has anyone had any experience with ScanCafe scanning slides? Based on this review, I sent about 500 40-year-old slides for scanning. They just left Tuesday, so I don’t know about turnaround time yet. When I get the scans back, I’ll comment on how well they did.
I cannot get http://www.scancafe.com to open up? I have been looking for a company to scan my MANY photos and was not sure who I could trust.
I cannot get http://www.scancafe.com to open up? I have been looking for a company to scan my MANY photos and was not sure who I could trust.
Thanks for this recommendation, I just sent them a box of negatives.
Today I decided to tape up the box of my wedding negatives from 1991, and ship them off to ScanCafe in India.
They do not require any special packaging, or organizing, so I just sent them the box they were stored in. Inside the box is a pile of negatives, sleeved, but still just a pile. They say they will sort them and figure it out. That is the kind of thing that I love, because who wants to sort through all the negatives? Just grab a handful, and throw them in a box…how cool is that?
Their prices are very reasonable (19c per 35mm negative, mine are medium format so that is more), and I have heard good reviews. I thought that sending them medium format negatives was a good way to test their quality before I send them the hundreds of negatives (I will never scan these on my own) I have in a box in the closet. I will keep you posted on the progress and outcome.
Thanks TWIP team!!
Thanks for this recommendation, I just sent them a box of negatives.
Today I decided to tape up the box of my wedding negatives from 1991, and ship them off to ScanCafe in India.
They do not require any special packaging, or organizing, so I just sent them the box they were stored in. Inside the box is a pile of negatives, sleeved, but still just a pile. They say they will sort them and figure it out. That is the kind of thing that I love, because who wants to sort through all the negatives? Just grab a handful, and throw them in a box…how cool is that?
Their prices are very reasonable (19c per 35mm negative, mine are medium format so that is more), and I have heard good reviews. I thought that sending them medium format negatives was a good way to test their quality before I send them the hundreds of negatives (I will never scan these on my own) I have in a box in the closet. I will keep you posted on the progress and outcome.
Thanks TWIP team!!
I just discovered this site via a link in a ScanCafe email and I have some experiences to share. I have been sending slides to ScanCafe for about a year … starting with a small batch and working up to larger batches as I gained confidence in their operations and as I had time to collect the slides.
Some of my slides were almost 50 years old … most being Kodachrome but with a significant fraction of Ektachrome. About half were 35mm and the majority of the others were split-127 roll film, mounted in 828 mounts. There also was a sprinkling of the little square slides from the consumer-cameras of the 1980s; I think this was 820 film.
Since I was dealing with slides that can be handled individually, I used my light box (surprise … the thing still works) to cull out the really bad ones so that I only sent slides I intend to buy. Some of those that I sent were faded pretty badly and I know they had more than their share of dust and crud on the surface with a scratch here and there.
The results range from absolutely superior scans to acceptable scans that I will tweak someday when I decide to print the picture or to incorporate it in a DVD slideshow. I was happy to find that even some of the faded pictures came back with improved color. Not all of them … I guess the tech just overlooked the faded color on those … but some.
The second batch needed rework. More than half the scanned slides (there were about 100 or so) were very dark or very high contrast … or both. Now some of these originals were taken at high noon … at high altitude … in the sun … and were pretty contrasty to begin with. But the scanned images were unacceptable. I fired off an email to the ScanCafe office and after exchanging emails about the situation they agreed to redo the slides. And the redo was successful!
I have received scanned images on DVD for four batches, the last being 685 slides. My fifth batch … the final one, I think … has around 900 slides.
Turnaround time is what it is when you ship stuff to the other side of the world. My fourth batch was shipped on 20 March and was returned to me on 13 June. The other turnaround times have been less, maybe two months … except for batch two that was rescanned. Batch #2 took about 4 months. I suspect it lost its place in the processing queue when it was reworked.
I am a happy customer of ScanCafe. I NEVER would have found the time to do all this scanning on my own, even if I am retired. And I NEVER would have had the scans made if the price were a buck or more each. I just ship the stuff off and wait patiently; remember what your Mother told you; patience is a virtue. Anyway, there is no other choice …
Maybe someday I’ll get around to the negatives.
DICK
I just discovered this site via a link in a ScanCafe email and I have some experiences to share. I have been sending slides to ScanCafe for about a year … starting with a small batch and working up to larger batches as I gained confidence in their operations and as I had time to collect the slides.
Some of my slides were almost 50 years old … most being Kodachrome but with a significant fraction of Ektachrome. About half were 35mm and the majority of the others were split-127 roll film, mounted in 828 mounts. There also was a sprinkling of the little square slides from the consumer-cameras of the 1980s; I think this was 820 film.
Since I was dealing with slides that can be handled individually, I used my light box (surprise … the thing still works) to cull out the really bad ones so that I only sent slides I intend to buy. Some of those that I sent were faded pretty badly and I know they had more than their share of dust and crud on the surface with a scratch here and there.
The results range from absolutely superior scans to acceptable scans that I will tweak someday when I decide to print the picture or to incorporate it in a DVD slideshow. I was happy to find that even some of the faded pictures came back with improved color. Not all of them … I guess the tech just overlooked the faded color on those … but some.
The second batch needed rework. More than half the scanned slides (there were about 100 or so) were very dark or very high contrast … or both. Now some of these originals were taken at high noon … at high altitude … in the sun … and were pretty contrasty to begin with. But the scanned images were unacceptable. I fired off an email to the ScanCafe office and after exchanging emails about the situation they agreed to redo the slides. And the redo was successful!
I have received scanned images on DVD for four batches, the last being 685 slides. My fifth batch … the final one, I think … has around 900 slides.
Turnaround time is what it is when you ship stuff to the other side of the world. My fourth batch was shipped on 20 March and was returned to me on 13 June. The other turnaround times have been less, maybe two months … except for batch two that was rescanned. Batch #2 took about 4 months. I suspect it lost its place in the processing queue when it was reworked.
I am a happy customer of ScanCafe. I NEVER would have found the time to do all this scanning on my own, even if I am retired. And I NEVER would have had the scans made if the price were a buck or more each. I just ship the stuff off and wait patiently; remember what your Mother told you; patience is a virtue. Anyway, there is no other choice …
Maybe someday I’ll get around to the negatives.
DICK
Hi,
I put together this little spreadsheet comparing all of the slide scanning services. Just so everyone has choices.
http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=phRG-JoD0f6N8DrY8b8ZGLw
Do NOT USE scancafe. They no longer do Blank & White. I wasted 2 months waiting for the slides (btw they are sent to India). Further, the color stuff they did started out OK but then was no longer any good. I think some of my slides got color changed by the heat there or something. Avoid this company.
Do NOT USE scancafe. They no longer do Blank & White. I wasted 2 months waiting for the slides (btw they are sent to India). Further, the color stuff they did started out OK but then was no longer any good. I think some of my slides got color changed by the heat there or something. Avoid this company.
Lars,
You did not “put together” this spreadsheet. You merely copied it from slidescanningpros.com website!! unless, ofcourse, you are the Marketing Director of this firm and have slipped in your spreadsheet, just to “help” others.
Show some honesty mate…