That was my original point, Nick. Because the world is moving away from film, the value for a lab to service film is continuing to weaken. It becomes a difficult business model to work with. This situation is going to continue to get worse, not better. That is why I said that you will need to do it yourself. It means paying for a good scanner and investing the time (lots of it) to scan and retouch to get the quality you want.
Think of it more like Kodak with Kodachrome. Originally there were more labs that would process it. This made it more affordable and quicker turnaround and better quality because of competition between labs. As interest started dying out, fewer labs could make a business out of it and so consolidation started happening. This made the turnaround slower and less competition - means higher prices and lower quality. Eventually it got down to one lab in the world. Film is headed down the same basic path. Less and less R&D means no more film breakthroughs, more and more labs will consolidate on processing (and almost all of them will just scan your film to the quality you are experiencing or worse. As they consolidate, prices will go up and quality will go down. Manufacturers will or have quit making any new film equipment (cameras, processors, etc). As those break down, the business proposition to fix them will not be there. They will just stop. It is a slow, downward spiral where costs continue to go up and quality continues to go down. I realize this is not a pretty picture, but it is where the market has largely gone and is continuing. That is why I am saying you should set yourself up to control the quality - that means you will need to do the processing (to control chemicals and damage to film) and you will need to do the scanning. I tend to agree with William Robb in that if you are doing film, shouldn't you use the process all the way through instead of converting to digital halfway through? -- Best regards, Bruce Friday, March 19, 2010, 10:55:16 AM, you wrote: NW> G, NW> This is why I am so upset. I went to a "pro" lab and had expensive NW> "high quality" scans done. And I am just not happy with the quality. NW> On Fri, Mar 19, 2010 at 11:36 AM, Godfrey DiGiorgi <[email protected]> wrote: >> On Fri, Mar 19, 2010 at 7:54 AM, Nick Wright <[email protected]> >> wrote: >>> The bottom line is that I really truly prefer film. I prefer the look. >>> I prefer the process. >>> >>> Thanks for the input. >> >> If you prefer the look and the process of working with film, I'd >> recommend either buying a top-notch film scanner and learning to do >> that yourself or incorporating in your process having professional >> quality scans done by either a local pro service that you build a >> relationship with or using ScanCafe.com on their quick turnaround, pro >> service. >> >> I see nothing wrong with someone preferring film capture and wanting >> to work with it digitally post-capture. For me, it's a slow, difficult >> and expensive process ... I find it gets in my way ... but I also love >> the look of film combined with the ease and quality of digital image >> management and processing. >> >> If that's what you prefer to do, you simply have to find the way to do >> it that satisfies your quality and workflow desires. Your expectations >> of quality, cost and convenience should also be metered by the >> limitations of the medium... both that of film itself and of the >> scanning process ... of course. >> -- >> Godfrey >> Â godfreydigiorgi.posterous.com >> >> -- >> PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List >> [email protected] >> http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net >> to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and >> follow the directions. >> -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
