Quality Scanning in NYC

[Bobonli]

I'm trying to find a place in NYC or Long Island suburbs that does excellent quality scanning of 35mm film. It's been a while since I've shot film and don't know who the good labs with good scanning services are.

I'm using a local shop now, and have a feeling the quality is not so good. My Tri-X scans look terribly grainy and I want to go somewhere with an established reputation to figure out if it's my choice of film, my shooting abilities or just sloppy scans.

On a related note, when you get your scans back from the lab, are they in jpeg or another format, and what's the size of a typical file on the CD? Mine are 6mb on the disc, open in Photoshop as 34mb. I'm wondering if I'm losing data due to the jpeg format.

Thank you

 

[jsrockit]

Unfortunately, I'm in the same boat. Everywhere I've tried sucks. Hopefully, this thread will find something good.

 

[Bobonli]

Should I take this to mean that folks either send it away or scan their own?

NPS looks promising but I hate to send film cross country if there's someone I can use locally.

 

[drewbarb]

If you're willing to do your own scanning, you can rent time on an Imacon scanner at Printspace on West 19th St. (Link below.) Imacons are about the best desktop scanners out there, and the folks at Printspace are very cool, and very knowledgeable- they can get you set up. Get organized at home, and bring a small portable drive or some discs. If just pump out raw scans there while you're paying for time and then do all the adjustments at home, you can get plenty of scans done in an hour or two to make it just about the cheapest way possible to get high quality digi files from your film.

I've done my own work, both traditional wet darkroom and digital at Printspace for ten years. I no longer live in NYC, but I still work there whenever I'm in the city and need facilities. I highly recommend them.

http://printspacenyc.com/

 

[Bobonli]

Well, to answer my own question and maybe help out some other folks: LTI in NYC is well-regarded for processing, so I gave them a try. They ran a roll of Ektar from my newly acquired M6 that had some of the best looking images I've made. Their scanning is fine, too.

These are their "ordinary" (not high res, which are like $20 a frame) lab scans of XP2. They are both 2250 x 1500 scans ( 2 mb jpegs on the CD). For C41 processing they charge $8; and additional $13 for 4x6 prints and a CD.

Not bad, I think, but a scanner is likely in my future. Already bought the tank to develop my own B&W.