Quote Originally Posted by gmed View Post
What size do you recommend then?
I have a little different philosophy than a lot of the other places. I prefer to give a price for my best scan. This is the one you can use to "archive" the image, that has all the information that technology can get out of it. If you want to make something larger, at a later date, you don't have to rescan... If something happens to the film, heaven forbid, you have everything. Most of the cost for me is in mounting the image on the drum, and doing the analysis. It doesn't matter to me whether the scanner takes 10 minutes to scan, or 25. Might as well just deliver a great scan...

I do 35mm and medium format at 8000ppi, approx 500 meg and 2.2 Gigs respectively, 4x5 at 4000, about 1.75 Gigs and 8x10 at 2666, or about 3 Gigs. Everything is 16 bit RGB.

More importantly, unlike many companies that just put the film on the scanner and let 'er rip, I actually look at the image, do my best to understand what the photographer is after, and set the scan up to make that possible. There are places where you can get scans for $10, and they can't afford to do this. There's no analyzing the image, or rescanning if you think you didn't quite hit the nail on the head... It's the same with printing, the companies who charge less just print whatever file you send them vs the higher end places that work with you to produce a desired result.

I've had a lot of people tell me they have 200 images or so to scan. I say do a very small scan, maybe even with a point and shoot to help you edit the pile down to a minimum. It isn't easy to edit, I know. However, its an important process. Then when you are sure you have the right group of images you can get the scans you need. I don't know what you are up to so I don't want to make any assumptions, but generally speaking, scanning everything at top resolution is expensive, and unnecessary.

If you need some help, let me know... I've helped a lot of people thru the editing process. I'm a photographer and as most of my clients would tell you, I like hanging out with photographers, talking to them, giving them a hand when I can...

Lenny