Drum Scanning Services at Nik & Trick!

About the scans…

Using the Aztek Digital Photolab 8,1 software commands the actual scanning set up.  DPL is well thought out and feature rich for the purposes it was made for.   It uses sample pickers and histograms to control shadows and highlights to great effect, usually making scans with incredibly deep shadow detail and nicely controlled highlights.

Colour films are balanced across red, green and blue to reproduce an accurate colour palette hence the slight extra cost for time taken.  We know very well that folk often like to interpret colour balance to their own liking so we aim to return a scan that’s as the film should be.

Dust and scratches:  Wet mounting, we use the high-quality fluids recommended by other drum scanner owners such as Gamsol which can fill any scratches and hide dust to a degree, but dust is likely to be present and the sheer detail of drum scanning will find it all, so you may need to do a little spotting in any case.  When you do, scans look even more amazing!  

Wet mounting fluid by the way, evaporates in a matter of seconds leaving films completely unaffected.  Wet mounting also means that films are completely flat (to the drum) with the ensuing spot on geometry and focus when scanned, fluid mounting also eliminates Newton rings as well as the chromatic and halo aberrations that can occur when re-photographing negatives.

Once the drum is fitted to the scanner a preview scan is carried out, it’s that scan which is used to analyse, to then adjust and configure settings ready to go.  This procedure takes a lot of time and has to be done for every individual photograph. We’ll always scan the full frame, that will often include part of the matrix or rebate to be sure that you get 100% of the photograph.  If you say so then we shall scan the whole rebate which can often look really cool!

Resolution:  need we say?  Nothing matches the resolving power of a drum scanner, not even our amazing Noritsu! Definition is quite simply incredible…but you know that already or you wouldn’t have read this far!

Sending Films to Us:

Roll films should be presented in strips that we can mount to the drum.  When sending film strips you must clearly identify the frame or frames that you want scanning, we can’t guess! 

So please tell us the frame number or make a small mark the film matrix to indicate to us or make a diagram even!  We’ll always ask if unsure but there will be no refund if we get the wrong one should it be ambiguous!

Do please safely package your precious films.  Ensure that you send using the correct postage…we don’t have the resources to go to the PO for the dreaded “Insufficient Postage” grey card, sorry.  It’s advisable to add return address to your package.

Negatives and slides must be presented in a condition suitable to mount to the drum.  We are reluctant to do any cleaning if we can avoid it but if say a mounted slide cannot be removed from its mount or has some form of contamination then we reserve the right to decline. 

Our aim is to return them to you in the same or better condition than you sent them.

Drum Scan Samples…

The above are much reduced files from the original scans, these are set to a tiny by comparison, 2040px at the longest edge, we shall offer some downloadable sample files at a later date…see how we downscale files for internet use HERE!

How to get scans back to you? 

Well, the file sizes are far too big for electronic transfer such as WeTransfer or Dropbox.  Uploading will tie up our bandwidth to such an extent that it will affect other workflows.

So, please send a USB stick (not a portable drive please!) with your films so that we can return scans to you that way.  If you haven’t got one then we can supply those here: CLICK ME!!

We’ll retain scans for 30 days to ensure that all is fine and dandy!

Prices:

Drum scanning is quite labour intensive, (more so as we’re still learning right now!).  It takes time to mount films and sheets , also uses costly consumables in preparation to go on the scanner. 

Desperately urgent?  Well, if we’re required to interrupt other workflows so you’ll need to be prepared to pay up!

Here’s the table of data we’ve compiled so far. Prices will come when we’ve had the practice we need!

Format	DPI	Price B&W	Price Colour	Pixel Count (Variable)	File Size (Variable)	Scan Run Time	Megapixel Equivalent (@8bit!!)	Virual 300dpi Print Size
35mm Frame	4000			6100 x 4550	188mb	25 mins	28mp	20″ x 18″
35mm Strip	4000						n/a
Xpan Frame	4000
645	4000			10500 x 7800	465mp	36 mins	82mp	35″ x 25″
6×6	4000			8999 x 9000	462mb	33 mins	81mp	30″ x 30″
6×7	4000			10352 x 8632	511mb	36 mins	91mp	34″ x 28″
6×9	2000			7450 x 5050	210mb	35 mins	37.5mp	24″ x 16″
6×9	4000			14550 x 10090	840mb	1 Hour	146.6mp	50″ x 34″
120 Strip	2000			14600 x 4850	435mb	30 mins	n/a
6×12	4000
6×17	4000
5×4	2000			9590 x 7570	415mb	30 mins	73mp	32″ x 25″
5×4	4000			19180 x 15140	1.7gb	1 hour	292mp	64″ x 50″
7×5	2000
10×8	2000

Expect prices to start at around £14.00 to £17.00 going up to just under the £60 mark for 10×8. To help us learn faster and better in a “real” commercial footing, we will soon offer a bit of a bargain so that you can help us and provide us with contructive feedback…

Watch this space, it takes a lot of work and lots of time so please bear with us!