View Full Version : Film Developing / Scanning Service


Peter Moore
December 28th, 2004, 06:51 PM
Does anyone know - are there any services out there that will develop your film and provide full resolution digital images from the film? And by full-rez, I mean something like 4000 x 2000.

Thanks a lot.

Peter Moore
January 5th, 2005, 06:38 PM
Well, is there any way to scan 35mm film negatives? Are film scanners any good?

Boyd Ostroff
January 5th, 2005, 07:20 PM
Camera shops used to be able to send your film to Kodak for this. I got a roll done several years ago on a photo CD. There were files in different resolutions on the disk, the highest res were similar to what you want. The scans looked really good.

I had a Minolta Dimage film scanner for awhile and used it to digitize a lot of my photos. The results were pretty good, but I heard the Nikon Coolscan was better. I would have gotten that instead, but at the time they were so popular that nobody had them in stock.

But since I haven't touched any of my film cameras in about 4 years I just haven't kept up with this...

Peter Moore
January 5th, 2005, 11:58 PM
I know about Kodak picture CD but I thought those were pretty low res. Does anyone know if they're higher res, and if that's still around?

Boyd thanks for the info.

Ken Tanaka
January 6th, 2005, 01:33 AM
I've just begun scanning my film images with a Dimage 5400 film scanner. It's terrific, better (and less costly) than the comparable Nikon.

Depending on how many images you plan to scan, and how fussy you are, you might actually best benefit by investing in a good film scanner.

Many good photo development services will produce high-res scans on CD for additional fees. It's been a while since I've used a Kodak Photo CD but I believe they are actually produced in several resolutions (low, med, high). The best place to begin looking for a local service is to inquire at a local camera stores.

Emre Safak
January 13th, 2005, 11:11 PM
Big brand film scanners are very good, however I do not recommend getting one because scanning is so laborious.

Alex Ratson
January 14th, 2005, 12:39 AM
Just about all labs I have dealt with can provide scans of slides although this is costly and adds up vary fast if you get every roll done. For a while I would just get them developed and mounted and have the keepers scanned although even that added up to the point that it was cheaper to buy a good scanner. So I did. I went with the Minolta although The Nikon line is vary good and I actually would suggest it over Minolta if you have a lot of slides to scan.