Digital BW, The Print

I have not got involved in this discussion before, but reading this post 
about a budget (flat bed?) scanner out performing shop scans, made me think 
back to my own similar voyage of discovery (to keep things in the Homeric 
mood! <VBG>) It took me some while to discover that most Dip'n'Dunks, over 
here in the UK now use digital print machines even for their ordinary budget 
D&P services. The scans that I was therefore getting on CD were the same  as 
was used by them to prepare a 6"x4" print at 250 - 300 dpi, i.e. 1,000-1,200 
x 1,500-1,800 pixels. Needless to say, even selective (cropped / reframed) 
A4 prints were pretty dire!

This was not until I checked out the film services from one of the major 
nationaly photo retailers, however, when I found that they had several 
levels of scan service, with different levels of scan resolution. I actually 
mistyped that as "scam" resolution, which was the major problem, and why I 
bought my dedicated film / neg scanner - the prices rose exponentially, with 
an extra \ufffd6 or \ufffd7 for having a 36-exp 35mm film scanned in at the 3,000 x 
2,000 pixels required for a good A4 print!

The upshot of the above is that I would ask anyone complaining about shop 
scans to both check the scan resolutions (obviously!) but also whether they 
are asking for what are actually the budget scans used for cheap bulk 
prints, a situation that would be made worse if these scans were being 
merely interpolated to give a higher pixel count.

Tony Wells.


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "nsams2002" <normsams@...>
To: <DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Saturday, December 29, 2007 9:06 PM
Subject: [Digital BW] Scanning Quality


I unpacked and installed an Epson 200 scanner yesterday, (at a cost of
100 dollars!!)  Without any adjustments to the image, such as levels,
etc., using the Epson software, I got a scan vastly superior to what I
got from the shop.  I was going to post a "before and after" in the
Photos file for this list, but there doesn't seem to be a way to do it.

Norm