Wow, I'm SO annoyed

[cigrainger]

My local lab, which usually does a great job with scans has totally screwed me. My scans came back with black bars and chunks of my photos missing because they didn't position them right, the color washed out, and highlights COMPLETELY blown out. I'm absolutely disgusted right now. I cannot wait to get my own film scanner. This is not worth paying for. I can't even go back and complain because I leave for America tomorrow, early.

For example:

This was my favorite photo of the bunch. As you can see, it is grainy as hell. This should NOT be the case when scanning Fuji Velvia. You know you can project this to huge proportions before the grain shows. A scan like this should not look like this. Look at the blown out highlights through the trees -- in the actual slide, those are completely full of detail. Look on the path and you'll see a nearly invisible "ghost person". On the slide, he is still a ghost person, but he and his dog are completely visible. It made the picture. Fuji Velvia is known for rich, vibrant colors, especially greens in nature. The slide shows this, the scan is completely washed out. It looks blurry too.

LOOK at the size of the black bar! How far off can that positioning be? The yellow looks dull and pale, when in real life and in the slide it looks vibrant and bright.

The thing that makes me the most angry is that I know they're capable of better. Take a look at the colors in these, from the same place, on a different batch:

I am just absolutely disgusted.

 

[terri]

Can you at least put in a phone call to let them know you're unhappy with their work, before you leave? That at least gets some documentation going, so when you head back home they might do something to make this better.

 

[shorty6049]

can you bring them back when you return?

 

[Sw1tchFX]

yeah, just have them rescanned.

 

[cigrainger]

I am going to give them a call in the morning. I leave for America at half 10 after a 9 am doctor's appointment and don't come back until July.

 

[Weaving Wax]

Could be no more than a fluke. I personally think that the place you take your photos to does a LOT better of a job than any of the places I take mine to..Just give them a call..

 

[Unimaxium]

Funny, I've had the exact same problems with slide scanning at a local lab here. The lab usually does an amazing job scanning negatives, but has never seemed to get it right when scanning slides. And one time they even got the slides completely misaligned in the scanner like they did with yours. Of course, they were apologetic when I took them back, but it meant I still had to wait a few more days to get my photos.

I wonder if there's something about the scanning equipment that most labs use that makes it more difficult to properly scan slides than negatives. Perhaps they use different equipment. I know that the negative scanner at my local lab always puts some gallery software onto the CDs it burns, but when I get slides scanned it just comes back as plain JPEGs on the disc. I'd be interested to find out what kind of machines most labs use for digitizing film.

 

[Weaving Wax]

Actually the good scans he posted were slides, I believe...

 

[Unimaxium]

Actually the good scans he posted were slides, I believe...

I know, which means his lab already does a better job than mine ;-)
I was just conveying my own experience about how my local lab has never gotten slides right.

 

[DSLR noob]

I would be frustrated. They should give you a rescan AND pay you back your money.

 

[selmerdave]

Unimaxum,

I don't think there ought to be any reason that slides come out any worse than negatives. I always got varying results with the local pro labs (and for what it's worth, it was rare for them to be as good as the above), and since getting my own scanner I see how much the results can vary based on how the scans are done (how the machine/software is setup). So in your case, in all likelihood since print film is far more popular than slide film, their primary source for scans is probably setup for negatives. Rather than reset the whole process for a role of slides they probably send those rolls somewhere else for scanning, and unfortunately that place did a poorer job. FWIW I seem to get better results from slides than from print film.

Dave