rayfoxlee
Raymondo
I have been thinking of buying a V700, but then saw that Ag Photographic scans on a Noritsu HC-1800 at very affordable prices, so I sent them a trial 6x6 neg to scan at high and lower res (~18mb and ~90mb). The files are jpegs. They cost £8.24 including postage and are first rate IMHO.
Dev and scan is £11.99 and £7.99 for 35mm or 120, plus postage.
It seems to me that this is a service that deserves a try if you don't want to shell out for a V700/V750 or the new Plustek 120. I think you will be pleasantly surprised.
Ray
Dev and scan is £11.99 and £7.99 for 35mm or 120, plus postage.
It seems to me that this is a service that deserves a try if you don't want to shell out for a V700/V750 or the new Plustek 120. I think you will be pleasantly surprised.
Ray
Robin Harrison
aka Harrison Cronbi
Interesting to hear. Could you post a link? I couldn't find those D&S deals on their site.
rayfoxlee
Raymondo
Robin, just go to the 'B&W processing only' tab and down the page you can select scanning at different resolutions from the 'Film scan to CD' drop down box.
Ray
Ray
freecom2
Established
I can understand why the high upfront cost of the Epson, or even worse, the Plustek, would put you off - but if I'm doing serious work with a negative and want a high quality scan from it, I want to be dealing with a lossless file format. For £8 for a single negative, I'd want a TIFF file.
rayfoxlee
Raymondo
Yes, I was surprised at the jpeg file format, but I assume this is to cater for the maximum of 36 frames on a 35mm roll burned to CD. For Tiffs, you would need 5 CDs at 90mb, although my 6x6 were 65mb when imported into PS.
Surely you wouldn't lose any info if you convert the jpeg to Tiff before post? I would expect that the Noritsu jpegs would be much better than the v700/750 Tiffs, but this is speculation on my part. At £3.69 for a single ~90mb scan, I reckon it would be worth trying to see if it measures up to your own workflow - although you don't say what you are using to scan. It would be interesting to know.
Ray
Nomad Z
Well-known
I believe jpeg is 8 bits per channel, tiff is 16 bits. If so, that can make a big difference to whether or not parts of the image become posterised during post processing.
rayfoxlee
Raymondo
How about converting to Tiff before post processing - will that get over the problem? I certainly saw no posterisation after processing in LR and Nik software.
Ray
Nomad Z
Well-known
You can't make a genuine 16 bits out of 8 bits. The best you can hope for is interpolation of the missing data by the software. The extent of banding or posterisation depends on the particular processing carried out. If you want the best scope for maintaining fidelity during post processing, 16-bit scans are the way to go.
freecom2
Established
Lossy to lossless conversion? Not in my workflow at all.
I'm not doubting your good experiences with the scans you received back, or that it's a useful service to have; my issue is that it's scanning with pro-level equipment with pro-level prices, but not using a pro-level image storage format.
I'm not doubting your good experiences with the scans you received back, or that it's a useful service to have; my issue is that it's scanning with pro-level equipment with pro-level prices, but not using a pro-level image storage format.
ChrisLivsey
Veteran
http://www.peak-imaging.co.uk/
Navigate to services from film - custom scanning
RGB Tiff files 5750 optical resolution and priced accordingly, top class lab, no commercial connection other than as a customer and they were recommended to me by another photographer who is picky, no better guidance
A bit more "cheap and cheerful" no experience not criticising http://www.mr-scan.co.uk/medium.html
£2.95 per image Tiff 2400
Also http://pro-scan.co.uk/2.html
Lots of options if you care to google.
Navigate to services from film - custom scanning
RGB Tiff files 5750 optical resolution and priced accordingly, top class lab, no commercial connection other than as a customer and they were recommended to me by another photographer who is picky, no better guidance
A bit more "cheap and cheerful" no experience not criticising http://www.mr-scan.co.uk/medium.html
£2.95 per image Tiff 2400
Also http://pro-scan.co.uk/2.html
Lots of options if you care to google.
rayfoxlee
Raymondo
I have emailed Ag to ask them about supplying Tiffs. I assume that the reason may be down to how many frames they can get on a 700mb CD at max res. We shall see - I will post again when I get an answer.
Ray
freecom2
Established
Interested to hear the answer - will keep an eye on the thread.
RichyD
Established
I would go with the Epson it puts you in control. Personally I had the worst experience ever using the Ag film processing service and won't use them for anything.
For scanning, the trouble with these commercial machines is that they are setup for consumer tastes and I found scans were over sharp and over bright so when looking at high magnification had a spotted appearance. I have an Epson 4990, the predecessor to the V700, which I use for medium format and Minolta 5400 for 35mm.
If you don't want to invest in a scanner try one of alternative suppliers mentioned above. I've had good scans from Peak Imaging but if you want high resolution it does cost. I don't understand the premium charged for higher res scans as time taken is not directly proportionate to the file size.
For scanning, the trouble with these commercial machines is that they are setup for consumer tastes and I found scans were over sharp and over bright so when looking at high magnification had a spotted appearance. I have an Epson 4990, the predecessor to the V700, which I use for medium format and Minolta 5400 for 35mm.
If you don't want to invest in a scanner try one of alternative suppliers mentioned above. I've had good scans from Peak Imaging but if you want high resolution it does cost. I don't understand the premium charged for higher res scans as time taken is not directly proportionate to the file size.
AgPhotographic
Newbie
Thanks very much for that Richard - running down our business on a public forum without any explanation. Then demonstrating that you have no idea what you are talking about when it comes to scanning. It's funny, you seemed perfectly pleasant on the phone when discussing the issue and we offered to scan all the transparancies (at the largest size) and spot them digitally, free of charge, and offered free 12" prints too. Shows how vindictive people are when they are faceless on an internet forum.
I'll give other readers some background to the problem that occured with Richards work, then I'll get back to the original question about TIFF files.
We had a processing problem with our E6 - it was a straight forward glitch similar to that which will have afflicfted every single lab in the history of commercial processing. But it was very unfortunate, of course. The problem involved dirt on the processed transparancies which meant the processing quality was below the standard that was expected. There was no issue with colour or contrast though.
The commercial scanners, like the Noritsu we use, are not "set up for consumer tastes" - this is total rubbish. The only way to better the output quality from an HS-1800 is to scan on an Imacon or drum scanner - but it would be totally impossible to scan all the films in a commercial lab this way and considering the speed at which the Noritsu scans a film, the quality is truly stunning.
Having complained about "consumer set up" of these scanners, what is most extraordinary, Richard, is that you recommend Peak, who use Fuji Frontiers, which are a good machine, but these really were designed with the retail market, which is why they are commonly found in Boots and Jessops. This is bourne out by the way the Frontier scanners are a fiddle to use with 120 film and the resulting files can not be rez'ed up very much.
There are a multitude of settings in the software and, when scanning for lots of different customers, as the lab, we have to find a happy medium. If a customer likes less sharpness then anything can be done. Where customers want something specific we do this, and have a book where preferences are recorded for repeat customers.
But most important is to produce scans or prints with a consistant colour balance and density and this is down to the person operating the equipment, be it Noritsu, Frontier, Imacon etc. who needs to have the requisite experience to do this.
In terms of saving the files as TIFF, the Noritsu software will allow this for the medium size scans, but not the large ones, simply because they would be very large to handle. We advise customers who want a non-lossy file format to simply save-as PSD in photoshop or TIFF and then take it from there.
The final thing I would say is that we are processing hundreds of C41, B&W and E6 films on a weekly basis and the vast majority of these are scanned. We price the scans very competitively, and one of the reasons we can do this is because of 1. the efficiency of the Noritsu equipment; and 2. the efficiency of our people using it. And we have a very large number of repeat customers, some of whom are sending us films evey week. The majority of our customers are very knowledgeable and very specific about their requirements. A number of them are full time professional and very experienced. Apart from the incident with the E6, which very unfortunately afflicted Richard's film, we have not had any other issues like this and, with E6 in particular, we have a lot of very demanding customers.
Matthew Wells
rayfoxlee
Raymondo
As the originator of this topic, I really cannot see what all the fuss is about as far as Tiffs vs jpegs is concerned. Could anyone really tell the difference between an original Tiff scan and a jpeg converted to Tiff from a scanner such as the Noritsu? Based on my experience (albeit limited) of scanning from the company, I was delighted - and I'm not known for putting up with poor standards! Credit where credit is due. Ag's service is top notch and prices are very competitive, no question.
Ray
rayfoxlee
Raymondo
UPDATE: In answer to your points about format, I have taken the large jpeg and converted to tiff before any post is carried out and then compared the image with the original jpeg - no detectable difference. I then post processed both through PS with shadows and highlights and smart sharpen. Saved and closed and then re-opened. No detectable difference. I then imported both edited images into Lightroom and increased the clarity setting on both and then imported both into Nik Silver Efex and tinted the image and increased the structure setting and saved. By the way, Nik converts to Tiff in my workflow (not sure if this can be changed.
A lot of the above was done to see what degradation occurred to the jpeg compared with the image that was first converted to tiff. After the various processing steps above, there was a slight degradation visible at 200% in the jpeg image, when compared to the tiff image.
So, the bottom line - at least from my observations - is that the best way is to convert the Ag jpegs to tiffs before anything else is done to the image if there are any concerns about degradation, but I think the negative effect of working on jpegs is still only very minor and then only visible at very high magnification. As far as I am concerned, the Ag scans will stand up to the requirements of very demanding medium format shooters. Case for the defence of Ag proved, IMHO!
For the record, the images was taken on a Hasselblad loaded with FP4 and developed in Aculux.
Ray