Professional Slide Scan VS Home Digicam Slide Scan


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Tweek

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Jan 17, 2002
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Just got back my first roll of slides today, together with a CDR of the scans, from Photo Friend at Peninsula. I guess I'm one of those who will never turn back to negatives again (unless necessary) after seeing the quality of slides. The scanning costs $18 for a roll, resolution of 3072x2048. The reason why I tried the scanning was becuz I wanted to see the quality of the professional scans and compare it to the digicam scanning method as recommended by megaweb sometime ago. If the quality is comparable for web usage, I'll just use the digicam scan to save money next time.

I don't have a lightbox/lightpanel, so the digicam scans are done with one of those pushlights, you push on the round face and the lights come on, something like a nightlight. Since it doesn't produce white light, I did a manual whitebalance on the light before snapping the slides with a c700uz fixed with a closeup +4 filter. The comparison results are below. All the digicam scans were adjusted in photoshop to try to match the professional scans as much as possible.
 

Professional Scan
s00870009.jpg


Digicam Scan
sP5043734.jpg
 

Conclusion

The digicam scans are visibly softer, and are dirtier. The dirt is from the white diffuser of the pushlight, which I can't clean at all. Also, considerable effort is required to bring levels to desired results, and also to correct the colour cast. The best way to get around that will be to get a lightbox, or get a source of uniform white light that is clean without dirt (I was thinking of using small fluorescent tubes and some form of diffuser, but no concrete blueprints yet).

Overall, I'm quite satisfied with the results. While these digicam scans are not good enough for even 4R prints, they are alright for web display. I guess I will only send the slides for professional scan only when I want to print them out.
 

Have to agree with your conclusions... the shift in colour can be corrected using PS... But the night shot seems much better with the pro scan... The rest are very similar...

=)
 

a lot of fine details are lost in digicam scans.... however $18 for a roll was abit expensive for me, so I took the plunge to buy a slides scanner, so ex then.... it's certainly a good reason to get one nowadays. ;)
 

hi
do $18 dollar include slide processing?
may i ask what type of file do Photo friend save to? JPEG OR TIFF?
for 3072x2048, how big is the file size ( MB )?
thank you.
 

Originally posted by howie
hi
do $18 dollar include slide processing?
may i ask what type of file do Photo friend save to? JPEG OR TIFF?
for 3072x2048, how big is the file size ( MB )?
thank you.

Hi, $18 is just the scanning for one roll. Slide processing without mounting costs $6 there. So altogether, it isn't cheap at PhotoFriend. The output file is JPEG, and each file is about 3mb.
 

test for the reply.
wwill sent my for scanning
 

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