Our target clientele is archives, museums and very discerning home archivists

• Top end scanners and instant capture systems
• Highly qualified technicians with smart technical know-how who will work directly with you to make sure the digitizing and organizing of the digitized image is understandable, well named and well organized. 
• Interested, enthusiastic and engaged technicians

There are a plethora of systems and services available for digitizing home archives; many will suit most people’s needs very well but won’t be up to professional standards. Inexpensive film digitizing systems can be bought online and at some photography stores.  You can even download an app for your phone that will allow you to digitize film and for some, this will be good enough. If you’re not a “do it yourselfer” then there are many companies out there that do very inexpensive digitization.

Our place in the market is for those seeking the very highest quality with top end customer service for their digitizing project. We can work to FADGI standards, if required, meeting FADGI targets (FADGI are the digitizing standards set by the US Library of Congress but not necessarily desirable for the home archivist).  We offer affordable museum quality, for museums, archives and home archivists. 

How we work

1. Fill out the order form here ORDER FORM and in section 2 of the order form choose option “C”. Once the order form is completed hit “submit”.
2. Mail in your film. We will send you a “Your film as arrived” when your film has arrived with us.
3. Once we have completed your work, you will receive a paid access link to a gallery of your images for the amount of the invoice. Within the next few days your full size TIFF and JPEG files will be delivered via Dropbox Transfers. In the gallery you have the option of ordering archival pigment snapshot sized prints on a pick and choose basis with a variety of paper options. We do offer prints onto archival matte paper, which along with our archival pigment ink, makes for a true archival hard copy if you desire. This is a very rare service onto snapshot sized paper.
4. We will briefly hold your original film here before we return it, allowing you time to place a print order to be included with the return of the film. In this case, the second shipping fee when ordering the prints would be refunded to you.
5. We guarantee your digital files will be retained on our quick access drives for one year. After that the files are moved onto LTO drives which is an archivist’s standard for long term digital storage. We don’t guarantee we keep your files beyond one year but if you happen to lose your files many years later, we’ll likely have them here. 

Our scanners

 Creo iQsmart 3

The go-to scanner for professional image conservationists around the world. Superb high quality results with an efficient workflow means we can offer virtually unparalleled scans at much lower prices than was possible in the past with other top end scanners.

Included with this service

• Fluid scanned
• unedited 48 bit Tiff files as produced by the scanner
• edited in Photoshop, 24 bit Jpeg files

Phase One Cultural Heritage System

Probably the best camera system world wide. Phase One provides high end camera systems for industrial and commercial purposes. Phase One offers digital capture systems up to 150 megapixel resolution for a full 16 bit Tiff in any museum and archival standard like FADGI or Metamorfoze. If you need high end images from slides, negatives, glass plates, books or anything else, the Phase One system and FRI will be your partner.

Fujifilm Frontier SP-3000

A highly capable, high volume commercial scanner. Produces professional, sharp, clear images from sharp, clear film.  Scanning includes 24bit TIFF and JPEG files. If you require high bit depth images please request our Creo scans.

Creo iQsmart & Fujifilm SP-3000 specifics

• All of our scans are large. In most case, film resolving power aside, there’s enough resolution for a 20 x 30 print at 180 dpi on a 3:2 aspect ratio image (i.e. 35mm, 6×9 medium format). We don’t offer lower resolution budget scans but instead choose only to supply scans useful for virtually all practical purposes. Scan once and be done with it.
• Fuji SP-3000 scans can include infrared dust and scratch removal (optional) at no additional fee. Infrared dust and scratch removal systems such as Digital Ice and Image Intelligence can add some minor artifacting to the image. This feature isn’t available for B&W and Kodachrome type film as the suspended silvers in these film confuse this system and cause artifacts in the scan. Instead we fluid scan these.
• Creo iQsmart 3 scans do not have any infrared dust and scratch removal as is normal with a top end scanner. Some minor spotting is done in the included Photoshopping of the images but unusually dirty or marred negatives won’t be entirely repaired. Film is meticulously cleaned before scanning but some dirt that has sat on negatives for a very long time can’t be removed. It will have sunk into the soft gelatin emulsion.

Fluid Scanning (some surprising magic when IR dust and scratch removal systems won’t work)

• Fluid scanning greatly reduces –  if not eliminates  – scratches on film by filling them with scanning fluid during the scan
• Makes any retained dust on the film after cleaning more transparent so it shows up less
• Adds some bit of clarity by reducing light diffraction for those “pixel peepers” out there wanting perfection

When fluid scanning on our Creo scanner, the film is sandwiched between the scanner’s surface and a piece of Mylar while coated in scanning fluid. When fluid scanning on the Fuji scanners, the base side of the film where most of the scratches will be, is coated with fluid a moment before it is scanned. Fluid scanning on the Fuji scanner with anything other than B&W or Kodachrome type films is unnecessary because the Fuji scanner has an IR dust and scratch removal system built in. This system doesn’t work properly on any films that retain silver particles in the emulsion such as B&W and Kodachrome type films.

Pricing (USD)

Note: There will be a very large difference in the perceived quality of a “Photoshop edited” and an “unedited” scan. “Unedited” is for people who are able to edit pictures.

Unedited image scanning is something we offer but…they will not necessarily be properly rotated, will often have frame lines showing, will not have the remaining dust and scratches fully removed, often have poor color balance and can be low contrast and dingy looking. It is just the image as it comes out of our scanner completely lacking our competent edit. It is only with editing that a scanned image reaches its full potential and is a big part of why our scans look so good. If you should want both the edited and unedited files, there is a checkbox on the order form for this. There will then be a 15% surcharge on the price of the edited digital image file added to the bill. ‘We would not be charging you again the full price for an unedited file from the list below. There is some extra “housekeeping” issues that mean in order to also deliver unedited fils with edited files, we must spend more time in organizing these, properly foldering these and significant bandwidth issues for doing the upload so therefore they’re not free.

These are the approximate scan resolutions for the most common film sizes:

The minimum charge is 30.00 plus return S&H

There is a considerable amount of time involved in preparing orders for scanning, setting up accounts, creating galleries and preparing orders for return shipping so we have a minimum charge.

What format of film do I have?

Small format film can be digitized on any of our systems, while medium and large format is only offered on our Creo or Phase One system. If you’re not aware what format of film you have, find the descriptions below. We can digitize virtually all formats of Photographic film so only the most common are listed.

Small Format film (Most have perforations)

With the exception of Minox film, virtually all others will have some sort of perforation in the film that allowed the camera to advance accurately. This is a good indicator if you have small format film but here there is one exception too which is the rare 70mm photographic film which is considered medium format.

35mm film

126 film

110 film

APS Advantix

Minox

Medium Format film scanning (unperforated film)

With the exception of the rare format 70mm, all medium format films had no perforations and this can be a quick way to tell if you have medium or large format film. If your film is not 70mm and has perforations, you have small format film.

Large Format

We consider large format any size of individual frame (one piece – one picture) 4 x 5 inches or larger. There are formats such as 6 cm x 9 cm that are considered large format but we categorize these as medium format because we can fit many of these onto our scanner at one time so therefore can offer them at a lower price.

An oddball exception

View-master scanning, while these are a small format of film, they are labor intensive due to the fact, to do them well, we must remove them from the mount. Once removed from the mount, they must go into our Creo scanner because there is no way to do the properly in the Fuji scanner. Also, there is a fair bit of image that the goes beyond the View-master mount that is revealed once the film is removed from the mount. This small piece of film once out of the mount has a significant corner cut out of it which, in order to provide a simple four sided picture, we must digitally reconstruct that clipped corner. Completed image dimension is approximately 2800 x 3500 pixels.

View-master scanning

Full frame scanning

Add .50 per image

Using the Creo iQsmart scanner we’re able to provide full frame scans of all types of film but not with slides unless removed from the mount. The pixel dimension of the scan will be larger accordingly due to the larger area of the surface scanned but the actual picture part of the frame will be the same.

Archival Pigment Printing

Once your scanning order is completed, we will create an online gallery of the scans, where on a pick and choose basis, you can order prints of the films we have scanned for you. There is absolutely no obligation to order. You can simply use the gallery to preview smaller versions of the scans we will be sending back to you. When we’re done scanning,  you will be sent a payment portal to pay for your scan job and with that, you will have immediate access to your gallery.

The print sizes available from our print gallery service vary from 4×4 up to 8.5 x 11 inches. There are four paper option – Heavy weight high quality Inkpress or Canon glossy and luster photo paper, Kodak Archival matte and Hahnemühle Archival cotton rag. Prices vary from .45  for a 4×6 uncropped print to 9.40 for a 8.5 x 11 on Hahnemühle paper. There are also cropping options in the gallery if you desire and if not, images are printed virtually uncropped regardless of the aspect ratio. Unless you order a custom crop, we don’t cut off tops and bottoms of pictures in order to print onto an inappropriate aspect ratio paper.

While we are using archival pigment ink and not cheaper dye based inks, prints made on luster or glossy photo paper wouldn’t be considered archival but they will last a lifetime in an album or portfolio. Prints onto matte paper are truly archival and suitable for framing and long term display.

Return Shipping and Handling

* Shipping charges will be higher for exceptionally heavy, large, or fragile orders.
**Contact us before you send your order.

Scans are normally returned on drives which you can supply once you’ve consulted with us as to what size to supply, or we can supply at a competitive price. Small scanning jobs (under 5 gb) can be returned online. Please consult us before sending your order. In the case of an online return, shipping charges will still apply because we will be returning your original film.