Digital BW, The Print

It takes awhile to learn the idiosyncrasies of scanning.  Having worked 
in two consumer labs, they only do the most basic of training, and they 
buy the most automated equipment that they can.  The idea is to make the 
positions as unskilled as possible, because then you'll have the biggest 
pool of people who can do the job, and we all know that the more people 
can do the job, the less the company has to pay them.  Pro labs can 
charge more, and so they can indulge in more training, but only to the 
point where the work will support that training, and my guess is that 
there's relatively little call for digitalizing negatives.  For awhile 
many commercial studios still shot film, and this provided the volume 
(and budgets) that supported first rate scanning.  But since commercial 
studios are overwhelmingly using digital capture, this is no longer the 
case. At my studio, they want to scan some of their old film images for 
stock, and so they bought a Nikon Coolscan 5000.  Even so, they have a 
stylist (who doesn't know anything about scanning) do the scanning.  I 
helped her out a little, but they clearly aren't willing to pay me (a 
lowly assistant who does, however, have a fair bit of scanning 
experience) to spend the time to do a good job. Intermediate hobby/fine 
art photographers tend to get their own scanners, and so all that leaves 
is high-end hobby/art photographers/archivists who will generally be 
willing to pay for a good scan, although these people will probably 
require significantly less scans than the commercial people needed in 
the past, excepting perhaps the archivists.  Given the cost of really 
good scanners, either drum scanners or high-end flatbeds, we should 
either be willing to buy the equipment ourselves, or we should support 
the fairly small group of excellent scanning outfits.  These are 
difficult to find.  There are a number of places that sell on cost, and 
it's doubtful that they do excellent work.  In addition, there are a 
number of fine art photographers who have a high-end scanner for their 
own work, and they do scans to help pay from the equipment.  That's not 
a bad idea, but these people would probably rather be out photographing 
or working on their own stuff rather then doing other people's scans, 
and they might look at the scanning as a hobby rather than a business.  
Personally, I haven't found someone who gives the quality, service and 
fair price that I"m looking for.