Originally posted by Gooshin if i was to shop around localy for a place that converts my film negatives (or pictures?) into a digital file
what should i be on the look for so as to get the best quality of conversion.
can photo/negative scanning compete with 10 megabite RAW files in terms of amount of information? Will i still be able to play around with these images in photoshop as well as my digital RAW files?
I bouoght my own scanner, a Minolta Dimage II and scanned all my shots (about 20,000) with the scanner. it was slow, about 4 years, but worthwhile.
I scanned all shots using 8bit JPEG, and found that the quality was good, compared to the film I scanned.
I also cataloged all the neg's so that If I want to go back and take higher quality scans (i.e. not 8 bit jpeg) I can.
with respect to shops that scan, as others have commented, you need to clearly specify what quality you want, because if you are not careful you get really poor quality 1 MP scans.
One shop I deal with , Just Cameras in mississauga will scan strips for you. They recommend not cutting the negatives becasue they (at the time I got my K10D) charged a fixed price to load a strip, any length.