Scanning from old film vs photo. Which is better?

[zoossh]

Have got some old nepal pictures from a ex-classmate almost a decade ago, but he's got the complete set of the pictures but only two rolls of film found. i'm wondering if he could find the rest of the films.

i'm thinking whether scanning from the printed photographs (using home scanner vs lab) is going to be far inferior from scanning from the film (lab)? the pictures are taken from the time where none of us knows how to take photographs... and now when i relook at the pictures, they look really washed out. i wonder if scanning from the film (would ask for tiff or other high resolution formats available) gives me more latitude for enhancement?

can anyone offer advises for that?

 

[SzennyBoy]

I had a situation similar to this earlier last year when my dad dug up some old colour negatives of me and my family taken some 30+ years ago! We tried to re-print them and the colours came out all strange and off compared to the very old original prints we had in the old family albums. Close inspection of the negs revealed that the colours had deteriorated quite a bit over the years!

I tried scanning them on the home film scanner (Minolta Dimage Scam Elite II) in colour mode and we tried almost all possible tricks in PS to restore them but with no success. In the end I re-scanned the negatives in b&w mode and it actually turned out much better. It definitely gave the pictures a lot more character compared to if they were in colour! I guess in the end it will depend on the condition of the negs.

BTW, I did also go through the archiving exercise of scanning quite a few of the old pictures from the family albums (those that we could not find the negs for anymore) and BOY! that was a really tedious job!