North Coast Photographic Services

[scorpius73]

I will going on holiday this October to Istanbul, Turkey and to Bologna, Italy. I will be shooting film for the trip. I have not tried NCPS. I was wondering if anyone had gotten 8x10's made from the budget scans. Were they decent? I have read the other threads and no one mentioned this. If I shoot 20 rolls like last year on holiday. The $12 for the enhanced scan will add up big time. The largest I print is 8x10, so the budget maybe good for me. Opinions are greatly appreciated.

 

[sparrow6224]

I don't know what the previous threads have said -- I assume if you still want to use them it must be okay -- but I see from your Flickr site that you do a lot of black and white and I must tell you I gave them two changes and their black and white work was horrifying. The negs were essentially ruined, so grainy they all looked like they'd been pushed from 200 to3200 (it was all TriX shot at 400). They looked like they'd been rubbed in sand. I wrote to complain and never heard back from them. They did a splendid job on the Velvia 100 I sent them however. That's more up their alley. Dwayne's, which I'm about to try, will process for under $5 and then scan at high res (4.5mb, they say on their site) for an additional $2.99 so it's about $7.50 a roll all told. Keep in mind, if the processing is competent and clean and the scans inadequate you can always send out the five or six or ten negs you decide to print and have them properly scanned by the folks that are doing the prints.

 

[bigeye]

I only used them for Kodak 100G and 100VS tranny processing. Been perfect so far.

- Charlie

 

[whitecat]

I tried them for 4 rolls of asa 100 BW and when I got them back they were really grainy....like they were asa 1600 film.

 

[Mister E]

I've had NCPS develop and scan probably close to 200 rolls of film for me over the last year. I've spent more than $2,000 this year on dev/scans and they are spectacular. Just by word of mouth I've surely brought them $s,000 more business since the beginning of the year.

You can see their scanning work on my flickr. Marsha, their master scanner is particularly amazing. I love these guys and highly recommend them. They've been doing so much business that they had to increase their business hours. That has to say something especially in an economy as depressed as this one.

I've had 0 problems with any development and just a few scans I had to send back. This is understandable as I often send them 20+ rolls after one of my trips abroad. They always take great care of me and put up with my many emails.

 

[Mister E]

I tried them for 4 rolls of asa 100 BW and when I got them back they were really grainy....like they were asa 1600 film.

They've developed TONS of B&W for me. All of it came out amazing. I'm very surprised to hear you had an issue, but could it have been something else? Expired or fogged film? Bad exposure, etc?

 

[scorpius73]

Thanks for all the replies.
I am planning on shoooting mostly color negative for this trip. If I shoot any B&W for this trip. It will only be a couple of rolls. I will probably develop that myself. What I really want to know is if anyone has printed an 8x10 from the budget scan. If so, how did the print look? Thanks.

 

[JeffMerlet]

did not do any print yet. but here is my feedback based on my limited experience with NCPS.
I only started to use NCPS services since a month for some dev/scan of 6 rolls (BW and color slide). I did 1 batch with the enhanced scan, and the 2nd one with the budget scan, as like you, i was curious to see the result. I am totally happy with the budget scan, and will stick with it from now.
On top of that, they are really fast: send my films on Monday (usps priority mail), they receive them on wednesday and on thursday they send it back to me (usps priority mail), and I receive them on saturday.
The enhanced scan is around 48MB for a size of 5035x3339 with a resolution of 72 pixels/inch.
the budget scan is around 18MB for a size of 3088x2048 with a resolution of 72 pixels/inch.

 

[Tim Gray]

The budget scans are 2000x3000, which should be plenty for an 8x10. I've been happy with them so far, but I haven't gotten any B&W done; I do that myself.

Their scans are good, but they are minilab scans. Which is to say that the grain has a somewhat strange appearance - different than what I get from my Coolscan. It's somewhat larger, but at the same time, looks like it's had some kind of noise reduction applied to it. There's very little color to the grain - it's all luminance. The end result is that I get more detail out of my home scans, but the NCPS scans are smoother in areas of solid or slowly varying colors, like walls and skin.

I'm not complaining mind you. For $5/roll, it's a fantastic deal and a great way to get reasonably large scan from your film. I have no complaints with their development. I will continue to use them as my color lab.

 

[Zonan]

I don't know what the previous threads have said -- I assume if you still want to use them it must be okay -- but I see from your Flickr site that you do a lot of black and white and I must tell you I gave them two changes and their black and white work was horrifying. The negs were essentially ruined, so grainy they all looked like they'd been pushed from 200 to3200 (it was all TriX shot at 400). They looked like they'd been rubbed in sand. I wrote to complain and never heard back from them. They did a splendid job on the Velvia 100 I sent them however. That's more up their alley. Dwayne's, which I'm about to try, will process for under $5 and then scan at high res (4.5mb, they say on their site) for an additional $2.99 so it's about $7.50 a roll all told. Keep in mind, if the processing is competent and clean and the scans inadequate you can always send out the five or six or ten negs you decide to print and have them properly scanned by the folks that are doing the prints.

I had the same horrible results with my B&W- exactly as described above. Color was fine, B&W an abomination.

 

[atlcruiser]

I have used them quite a few times as well. All of my stuff has been MF color or slide. The budget scans are great! Starting with MF the smaller scan looks wonderful up to 13 x 19. 35mm will be fine at 8 x 10.

Quick turnaround, overall cheap, very nice quality scans.

What i do is to get the budget scans of everything first then, if i need a bigger res scan, I use my home scanner to get it giant. What killed me in the past was all the hours spent scanning crap jsut to see that it was crap 🙂

No opinion on the B+W as I do that at home.

 

[Luna]

My B&W from them came out good. But one film did come back a little more grainier then I expected.