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The Technical Fine Print

There are certain folks who like to read the fine print before they make an important decision. This section is for you. It’s not a light read, but will give you a look under the hood at how the video tape transfer process works. Our philosophy has always been simple: only offer a service if we can do it better and/or cheaper than the alternatives. If you can’t look in the mirror and meet that standard with a straight face, then don’t offer it at all.

Quality Factor #1 – Preparing Negatives for Scanning

Negatives tend to come to us in sleeves of some sort that often have very small handwriting and some level of stickiness to them. The first part of our negatives scanning process is to create a unique folder for each natural grouping of negatives, and transcribe your written labels into the folders so that we preserve your organization system. Then, we clean the negatives themselves with compressed air and/or microfiber cloths. Lastly, we evaluate the negatives to select the appropriate scanner technology.

Quality Factor #2 – Professional Scanners and Equipment

The various forms of negatives require many different scanning technologies. We evaluate every collection of negatives carefully to determine the right answer to get high quality scans while protecting the originals from any damage, fraying or tearing.

• Flatbed Slide Scanners: Flatbed scanners are the go-to machine for glass plate negatives and, because we can put light pressure on top of the scanner glass, for situations where 35mm negatives have become extremely curled. In these situations we use a special glass that eliminates a distortion called Newton rings. Flatbed scanning is a slower process, but allows us the flexibility to deal with challenging negatives at a high level of quality.

• Overhead Scanners: We recently built an overhead scanning rig that is yielding higher quality scans for medium and large format negatives at an affordable price. Overhead scanners refer to a premium camera element that images the negatives from above. We built this rig in-house using Nikon imagine elements and it costs ~$20,000.
• Feed Scanners: Premium film feed scanners are the best options for 35mm negatives and APS canisters. A feed uses a custom tray which allows a single strip of negatives to be inserted and then scanned image-by-image. The best machines for purpose were the converters made by Nikon. Fortunately, we have a huge supply of these devices and know how to maintain them, relying on 3D printing and expert handling. These Nikon scanners do a wonderful job on color saturation, removing artifacts and produce a super sharp image at 4,000 DPI. These scanning stations cost ~$15,000.

Quality Factor #3 – Image Retouching

Generally speaking, if our clients have kept their 35mm negatives over their prints and have them in exquisite condition, they are true photo enthusiasts who want the best out of their negative scans. Fortunately, we have wonderful options for these clients. Our baseline services include 2,000 DPI scanning, dust removal, correct orientation and cropping, light optimization mainly focused on exposure and white balance, and organized folders with sequential labeling of the .jpg files. Discerning clients often ask us for the following upgrades:

• Enhanced scanning resolution to 4,000 DPI
• .TIFF files for enhanced professional editing capabilities
• Advanced organizing with metadata tags for dates, geography, topics or faces
• Image retouching focusing primarily on color correction. We have an affordable service at $0.40/photo where we use our judgement, or a custom service for $95/hour where we work with clients to select the most special images to do high-end retouching work.

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