Batch Scanning BW Silver Negative -- Can Anyone Recommend a Service?

[Benjamin Marks]

I am looking at scanning a family archive of B&W negatives. Mostly these are Tri-x negatives developed in the 1970s by Modernage in NYC. They are in glassine sleeves of six-exposure strips. I do have a scanner at home, but batch scanning this many negatives would, realistically, take me a year. Anyone use a send-away service for such a thing? I realize this may be expensive as a proposition. But there are three kids here, and each would like a set. Could be worth it if it didn't cost more than a couple of thousand dollars.

Any practical feedback welcomed.

Ben

 

[Miles.]

I went through this process about 5 years ago. My grandfather had about 30,000 frames, half were mounted slides of Kodachrome/Agfachrome, and half were strips of B&W.

The quotes I received to scan them all were understandably astronomical (it’s a lot of work!).

I decided to sort them out on a light table, picked the “best” 1,500 and paid to have high-quality scans made from them. From there I put together a few photo books using Blurb (surprisingly affordable) and gave them to family.

As time permits, I’ll scan the rest on my own.

I’m sorry to say there isn’t a cheap way to do this, you either give up your time or your money.

 

[Chriscrawfordphoto]

I have my color negs scanned by Gelatin Labs. They're the best scanning service I have found. I haven't tried them for B&W, but they offer that, too and I think they would do good work.

Film Processing & Scanning | First Roll Free | Mail in & Drop-Off

Mail in or drop off for high-quality film processing and scanning. Get your photos developed with care and fast turnaround. Get your first roll on us!

gelatinlabs.com

 

[Godfrey]

I scan my own negatives on my home setup, but I'm not set up for volumes; I basically do up to a couple hundred at a time, at most, and then take an eon to sort and render them to finish..

When I had a job for a couple of thousand negs to digitize, I used scancafe.com to do the scanning work for me. They way their service worked then, it was best to simply eliminate the obvious dross, scan everything else, then edit down the scans after they were done to the ones worth paying for ... they allowed you to not accept up to 20% of the total number scanned at that time. That was about a decade ago so I'm not entirely sure this remains the same today, but they did an excellent job for me, and I did the final selection and rendering to meet my client's needs. They were reasonably priced and did a quick turnaround service.

G

 

[Benjamin Marks]

Thanks for your thoughts on this folks. Much appreciated.