A Great Blog

One is a Loneley Number

2012-05-18T00:09:00.000-07:00

Every photo is unique, of course, so why wouldn't you want a unique number for your scans?

For me it's been pretty obvious but it does take a bit of thinking about. Many clients want us to scan their images into several folders, each one given a meaningful title so they are easier to organise. Just suppose though at some point you want to change things around, for example you want to sort through your photos and send a folder of your kids photos over to Granny. This will probably pick images from each of those folders, and this is where the problem will arise if you don't have a unique numbering system.

With our approach each folder contains uniquely numbered images. You can copy any of those photos into a new folder without problems, you won't have to renumber five 01s, four 02s and nine 08s.

One small nightmare avoided. Unique photos with unique numbers.

Free Postage This Weekend

2012-05-04T13:14:00.000-07:00

Having seen the weather forecast this weekend we thought we'd do something to try to brighten our spirits, so here it is - free postage. Yes, if you mail your photos / slides / negatives we'll scan them and return them to you at no cost.

That's it, free postage. You can save a significant sum, today our return post bill was nearly £100 so we expect a lot of clients to be happy next week. If you're thinking of getting a scanning project under way now's your chance, a small incentive to get you going.

Free postage - get those pictures off to us now.

Worldwide Pinhole Camera Day

2012-04-10T00:56:00.001-07:00

This looks like an interesting diversion for anyone interested in photography, Worldwide Pinhole Photography Day on 29th April looks like a great idea.

35mm Slide & Negative Scanning - New Price for Professional Service

2012-03-30T10:13:00.000-07:00

Today we are dropping our prices for the Professional Service scanning 35mm slides and negatives, the old price was £1-30 and today we're dropping the price to just 95p. OK, why?

Originally there were two differences between Home and Professional - the dpi level (originally 2000 dpi and 4000 dpi) and file format (jpg & TIFF). Then we decided to scan everything at 4000 dpi because the quality difference is staggering and we don't want to ship sub-standard products. That left just the file format as the difference.

In the last few months more people have been asking about the Professional level service but frankly they've been put off by the extra 60p we had been charging. So, we've decided to make the bigger files much more affordable. You'll get great quality uncompressed files that you can edit to your hearts content, then save either as TIFF or jpg files. We think an extra few pence for the Professional service is definitely worthwhile. We look forward to doing even more Professional scans from your 35mm slides and negatives.

Slide / Negative Scanner Amnesty

2012-03-21T15:09:00.000-07:00

It's been busy this week with several enquiries about slide scanning and our Slide Scanner Amnesty.

Yes, the scheme is still in operation and each week we get one or two scanners to add to our junk pile. This week we've got devices from Plustek and Agfa, one of my particular hates. Although this is simply a unit badged up for Agfa it is built on a singularly tacky camera unit and a very poor light source. It's a marriage made in hell and Agfa should have known better. Anyway we're able to rescue a couple of people from rather poor purchasing experiences.

I'm not sure how much longer we'll continue with the Amnesty. It has been very popular and generates much publicity for us, along with a steady stream of calls saying are you still doing this? Yes, and we will do for the coming weeks. Probably.

When is a square not a square?

2012-03-18T09:59:00.000-07:00

Answer - when its a pain. Even when expressed politely it's hard to get it across to clients that their images are rarely square. I don't mean they should be described as "oblong" or "trapezoid", it's just that they are not quite square. Why? Typically it's a result of the way prints pop out of processing labs. Recently they've been using machines that have inside them giants rolls of photographic paper onto which they print your image, then a mechanical guillotine whips across the paper and your print drops into the output tray. Very, very close to square, but often not quite.

If you try to square off the print you have a problem, very often two edges are not cut truly on the square. Inside our scanner is a computer chip which has been given the job of managing the scanning process. As the print goes through the system receives a massive amount of data from which it has to construct an image scan. What does the poor algorithm do? First, it could chop away some of the image and create within your print a true square, discarding some data. I can just imagine the outcry "You've chopped off Uncle Harry's nose!" Put it back, immediately. Second, it could create a shape as close as possible to a regular one outside the image. No data is lost, a small grey / black strip is added; and that's the option Kodak went for. When I think about it that's the only sensible option.

So here's the deal. If you want not a trace of black infill, send us images with four 90 degree corners. Better get it dead right because we operate down to 1/600th of an inch.

Flipshare

2012-03-15T15:11:00.001-07:00

Over the last three years I've got a lot out of my little Flip video camera. Dead easy to use and instant movie sharing via the Flipshare service.

Until Cisco killed the product and the sharing service. But, there's a replacement - Givit. They're also offering a painless migration from the old platform to Givit, along with a free basic account.

Kodachrome Slide Scanning

2012-03-04T04:51:00.000-08:00

Having been scanning slides for over eight years I don't get very excited any more, but this last week has been out of the ordinary. Ever since we started Kodachromes have been an issue. The first big order we got was 800+ photos (did them on a flatbed, took two weeks) and the second was a large batch of Kodachrome slides for a client in Scotland.

Ever since the results with Kodachrome slides have been less impressive that we've got from any other material - even Ektachrome 35mm slides. The two main problems have been an excessive blue colour cast in the scans, and the inability to apply Digital ICE which removes dust and scratches. So we've been forced to ship overly blue and dusty scans.

Of the two issues the blue has worried me the most. I've tried various methods to beat the blues, using Photoshop and latterly Aperture to speed up the re-balancing of the images. So we whip through slide scanning and then hit the buffers on that colour cast. Although Kodak called all that product Kodachrome, in reality there were many different recipes for that slide material, 20+ as I recall. Finding a single preset to catch them all defeated me, you need to adjust each frame and that takes an age.

So, this weeks excitement is this. We can now scan Kodachrome slides - 35mm Kodachrome slides and m/f - without the blue cast. I ran through 200 last week, taken from several batches both my own slides and slides supplied by clients, and in every case the blue cast was removed. Importantly for us as a slide scanning service it was done by our new software, at production speeds.

I also tackled the issue of no Digital ICE with Kodachrome. Yes, breathtaking, we can now apply dust and scratch removal to Kodachrome. The results amazed me, I'd got into the mindset that this would never be possible, but yes we can now do it. I have to say a bit of a word of caution, this process still needs a bit of tweaking, but compared to where we were before there's no comparison.

Next week we have some more work to do, the process to automatically number slides as we scan them is flawed so that needs tweaking and setting up a batch takes much longer than is the case when we use Nikon's software. When we've beaten those issues we'll be able to offer clients a whole new dimension in Kodachrome slide scanning. Then you can be excited too.

How To Sell Your Photos

2012-02-08T12:54:00.000-08:00

Many of our photo scanning clients are professionals, but many more would like to turn their hobby into a paying interest. "How can I sell my photos?" is now one of our most frequently asked questions.
It is not easy, the main problem is getting your images in front of people who might be prepared to pay for image rights. Here in the UK it's tough, established image libraries are picky about accepting new photographers, and are very demanding in terms of image quality. Unless you have a massively important or unique collection of images it's likely that setting up your own website will be doomed to failure, you'll never get back the cost of setting up the site and publicising it effectively.
So, check out this potential solution - Flickr.
Yes, that's right. One of the biggest amateur photo sharing websites has a link with Getty Images. This means you can flag your images as being available for sale, buyers are then able to access your images and who knows, you might make some money.
Looking at the site today I was impressed with the help and guidance available on the site, so if you're looking to dip a toe in the waters of paying snapping, check out Flickr.

Photo Scanning - Crossing the Borders

2012-02-02T00:29:00.000-08:00

Some years ago I was asked by Kodak if there were any enhancements I could suggest for their photo scanning software. One of my suggestions was to find a way to automatically remove the white borders that appear on many prints. Sharp intake of breath on the other end of the line, I guess there's hard maths behind that. Anyway, that feature has yet to appear.

When we scan slides we typically crop inside the frame, so the client sees a "borderless" image, same with negative scanning. the only exception is with professional photographers who typically don't trust us to get the crop right so want every last bit of data.

Recently we've added a slideshow building facility and I'm pleased to say it's being well received. We off three options and ask clients to express their preference. Each slideshow has it's attractions but none is outrageous so I expected preferences to fall pretty evenly across each style. Much to my surprise one is an out front leader, and guess what? It automatically adds a white border to all the images in the slideshow.

Focus After The Fact

2012-01-24T13:19:00.000-08:00

This after noon I spent a couple of hours on a rescue job. A client supplied a set of images taken of his late mother, but due to a camera operator error they were all out of focus. Hence time spent trying to get a degree of sharpness into each image. If you're familiar with Apple's photo editing application, Aperture, you'll know this has a solid set of sharpening tools. You can sharpen the whole image or you can "paint" sharpness into an area of your image.

So, switch off USM in Silverfast, scan the negatives, then load them into Aperture. Finally yielding 12 images where the subject is acceptably sharp, and that area of the image is isolated with the background slightly unfocused. Then I was reminded of this - the Lytro field camera.

This is a special device, it's a camera that doesn't focus. It is a revolution in photography.

I won't try to describe the camera - just go to lytro.com to see it - but it looks different and the resulting image can be focused at any given point in the image. I don't mean finally, you can post the image on a website or email it and the observer can adapt focus as they wish. A truly brilliant idea.

Photo Apps

2012-01-22T08:24:00.000-08:00

Having just acquired an iPad I opened the supplement in today's Sunday Times looking for ways to use my iPad for something photographic. They list several apps but most of them are for the iPhone. No use to me, I'm Android. Still they do mention a couple for the iPad.

8mm Vintage Camera: add a nostalgic style to movies. Adds dust and flecks and the sound of a running film reel.

Paper Camera: makes your photos look like they were hand-drawn on paper.

Thumba Photo Editor: looks like a powerful set of tools - cropping, rotating, brightness & contrast adjustments, hue / saturation, adjust white balance. Sounds a lot for just 79p.

Kodak. More Than Oops.

2012-01-19T00:17:00.000-08:00

So, once proud Kodak has filed for protection from its creditors. For people of my age Kodak, like Coca Cola, Pepsi, Ford and so on, was one of the names we grew up with and as I've said many times it's a company that owns photography. So it should, it invented most of it.

I wish Kodak well, particularly those we've had contact with in their photo scanning division. Kodak is needed, not just by this business, but by everyone who has ever picked up a camera. Let's hope this tactic will give them the time they need to pull through.

Although I wish them well I have to say I think they're on the wrong track. Kodak IS images, not printers and certainly not flogging off their patents, which seems to be the plan of the current top man. Why, why, why are they flogging themselves to death advertising printers when surely the evidence of their own eyes must prove that nobody is bothered about printing.

Yesterday I was in a branch of PC World. Yes they had a cute display of Kodak printers, curiously at ankle level. Nobody taking any interest. People were congregating by the large displays of cameras, still and video, an area where once Kodak would have dominated. Nikon, Olympus, Leica are all great names from the past who have somehow pulled through to the other side. It would have been nice to see a Kodak credit on some of those cameras.

Best of luck Kodak, hope you make it, but you might have to forget those printers before it happens.

A Great Blog

2012-01-16T03:19:00.000-08:00

This is the first post about issues, thoughts, ideas, and a few gripes on photo scanning.

Photobook Prices to Fall?

2012-01-05T07:23:00.001-08:00

When is a book not a book? Well according to the VAT man, when it’s a photobook. Apparently he’s long taken the view that a photobook is really a special type of photo album, which means they’ve been subject to VAT.

However a recent ruling in a case brought by Truprint, photo and photobook printers. it has been agreed that all photobooks should be treated like ordinary books, effectively exempt from VAT. Apparently there’s been a split for many years in the photobooks industry between those suppliers who emerged out of the book publishing trade and those who turned to photobooks from printing snapshots. It was difficult for the latter to compete with the former as the VAT people told them to charge VAT, not an instruction they’d given to their competitors who naturally thought they were in a variant of the book business. Truprint and I’d guess others are now in line for a chunky tax rebate.
What does that mean for the market? Maybe prices will fall, maybe not. At least all suppliers will be on the same tax footing going forward.

Christmas Deadlines

2011-12-17T04:09:00.001-08:00

We’re doing everything we can to make sure we meet our Christmas deadlines. One concern is potential delays in the mail at this time of year but we’ve been assured by Royal Mail that Recorded and Special Delivery will be unaffected.
Photo Scanning
All work with us now will be completed and posted to online albums. We have additional capacity for runs of up to 1,000 images but as next week goes on returning prints will be tight. Images will be available for download soon after scanning.
Slide Scanning
All work received will be scanned and returned. We could handle additional small tasks, up to 200, but larger projects will be completed in the New Year.
Negative Scanning
We are expecting a large batch of 35mm negatives which will absorb all capacity up to Christmas.
Video tapes to DVD
Existing orders and video tapes with us now will be completed. Nothing received from now can be completed before Christmas, sorry.

Divine Composition With Fibonacci’s Ratio (The Rule of Thirds on Steroids

2011-12-10T03:56:00.001-08:00

If you’re interested in photo composition, there’s an interesting article here.

35mm Slide Scanner? Which?

2011-11-21T14:20:00.001-08:00

You can’t win them all, although we try. Last week I had a couple of conversations with a client who’d inherited a stack of 35mm slides. He has nearly 200 slides.
Of course I said, use us. Save time and bother, access expertise and technology (high price scanners, specialist software) that hobbyists are unlikely to afford. He was doubtful, in retirement he has time, a decent PC, so why not spend his money on a scanner?
Today he rang to say he was going to take the DIY route, so - sorry, but ....
Could I recommend a 35mm slide scanner?
Not wanting to sound like a sore loser I said I’d revisit the scanner market, which I’ve just being doing via Amazon. As the many users of our slide scanner amnesty will know I have a virulent dislike of the many cheap and cheerless scanners based on the insides of cheap digital cameras. Don’t waste your money, I’m pleased to say there are better options available.
We use Epson flatbeds, their top-of-range V750 and they’re great although pricey. However Epson now offer a V330 capable of scanning slides and negatives, at £83-50. Not very much more than the cheapo boxes. Plus this unit will scan several slides in one session, helping with the boredom factor.
Next up in the Epson range is their V500 at £150. That’s a big step up but you do get Digital ICE, dramatically reducing dust and scratches; and the time you’ll need to invest to get decent scans.
I’ve never used a Canon scanner but many who do sing their praises. The lowest price Canon I could see is their 5600F, at just under £100. If the F stands for FARE that’s Canon’s alternative to Kodak’s Digital ICE so you might get decent, clean, scans. Judging by user feedback you might have an issue with Windows 7 though.
There - plenty of choice. Whatever you go for, get a decent scanner, not a toy.

Ho Ho Ho

2011-11-07T12:53:00.001-08:00

Hard to believe but Christmas is coming. Took a trip to the High Street on Saturday and saw that even the charity shops have Christmas displays, so it’s time to highlight our seasonal offerings.
Again this year we’re offering our Gift Vouchers for any combination of our video conversion, photo scanning, slide scanning or negative scanning services. These are personalised with a message you choose, and we can either send the voucher to you, maybe to include with a Christmas card, or sent direct to the lucky recipient. They’ve been very popular every year and make a great contribution to saving family memories.
This year we’re offering a new twist. When you pay in advance for the voucher we’ll give you an extra 10% boost to the value of your voucher, preserving even more memories.
If you’re looking for other Christmas gift ideas we have suggestions.

Scan, Service, Services, Photo and 'S'

2011-10-23T15:30:00.001-07:00

Some things I don’t understand and the dark arts of SEO are one. Small example follows.
I think 1Scan is a photo scanning service. So does Google, we rank pretty well for that. If you search on that term we’re pretty close to the top. I’m happy.
We pop up pretty high for photo scanning too. Seems reasonable to me.
I’d expect us to appear high up for searches on ‘photo scanning services’. That’s just an S tagged onto photo scanning. Yet for some reason we’ve just dropped 75 places for that term.
Then, we just bounced back. Minus 75, then promptly up 81. Crazy.

Final Cut - Video File Conversion

2011-10-16T09:49:00.001-07:00

One of the services we offer is to convert video tapes to computer files. We can support a wide variety of file types, but about 80% of demand is for Windows compatible files, the balance Mac. I’m pleased to say clients have been very happy with what we’ve been doing over the last four years.
Mac clients have been supplied with Quicktime files, based on the MP4 codec. I’ll try to explain that, Quicktime isn’t strictly speaking a file type it is more like a wrapper inside of which is a file with your film. The structure of that file is determined by the codec selected, as I said, in the majority of cases we’ve used the MP4 codec. Then last week I got a call from a client who couldn’t open our files in the video editing program they wanted to use - Apple’s own Final Cut.
As a consequence over the last few days I’ve been reading, checking, testing to try to get to the bottom of this, finally arriving at this point. For reasons I cannot understand if a Quicktime file is created using MP4 it can be opened and edited using Apple’s iMovie product but the same file cannot be opened in Final Cut.
I think the file type / codec Final Cut is looking for is DV format. Now, we can produce DV files, but there’s a big but attached. Mainly - but, they’re gigantic. A movie converted into Quicktime / MP4 ay just over 1Gb landed at a whopping 66Gb when processed as a DV file. And the conversion took about four times longer. For that reason we’ve made it clear that we aren’t offering DV format files.
What’s the solution if you would like to use DV files in Final Cut? Well, you can open these in iMovie and use that program to convert them to DV format.

Scanner Smashing - the movie

2011-10-06T08:37:00.001-07:00

Many people have taken advantage of our Slide Scanner Amnesty under which we credit the value of your old, knackered, broken scanner against the cost of our scanning service. But what do we do with the old scanners? Well, I just dump them at our local recycling centre.
I think some people have been a little suspicious, maybe thinking this is a clever ruse to make a fortune selling old scanners on eBay. They have maybe thought there’s a catch. So I thought I’d shoot a quick Flip camera video showing one scanner meeting its end. A simple, five minute job, or so I thought.
No, you can’t film this at the dump, very camera shy, and anyway there’s nothing to see. Electronic goods are sent away to be stripped down so there’s really nothing to see. Plan B, destroy it myself at home. Place Minolta scanner on lawn, set up camera, grab large hammer. Roll film.
Hit scanner. Nothing. Repeat, still nothing. The force of the blows were just being soaked up by the grass and no damage was being done to the slide scanner. So I dug out an old paving slab and placed the scanner on that. Roll film, hit scanner.
I must have hit that thing ten times before it showed any sign of damage. Eventually the plastic on the casing showed a small crack and a few blows began to break the unit. To be honest I was disappointed, I didn’t get the great drama I’d hoped for. Finally, more than a little frustrated, I just threw the hammer at it. Not a great contribution to modern cinema but at least you can now see what we do with old scanners, and it doesn’t involve ebay.

Best Results?

2011-09-06T00:06:00.001-07:00

If you had a choice, we sometimes asked, which would give the best results?
OK, you’ve got photo prints, negatives and slides. In practice we can quickly rule out a choice between photo scanning and slide scanning. It’s exceptionally rare that anyone would have any volumes of slides from which prints had been made, so the slide would be your only source material and you’ll have to go with that.
Photos started out as negatives, so you should have a negative to go with each of the prints. Technically its undoubted that negative scanning yields a better image than photo scanning. Don’t blame us for that, it’s down to a thing called dynamic range. That’s a measure of the spread of colour information a photo or negative can handle. negatives normally have great range, commercial prints much less. So all your colours, particularly the details in the shadows and highlights, get compressed and lost in the printing process. Negative scanning catches that, photos have lost it already.
But .... we can scan photos at a much lower cost than negatives, so most people opt to have their photos scannned.

Bigger Photos

2011-09-03T12:57:00.001-07:00

Facebook has announced it will support bigger photos, up to 960 pixels. More here.

If It's Not Us ...

2011-08-27T04:57:00.001-07:00

Sure, we’d love to scan every photo, slide and negative you care to send our way but you have to be realistic. For many people it’s just too risky putting precious photos in the post. 1Scan is a local scanning service for Essex, north London, Kent and other parts of Greater London.
What if you live elsewhere? What if you just can’t trust the mail? Well you can try Google or maybe a dedicated scanning service directory. Find-a-Scanservice is a directory of scanning services, searchable by type of photo originals to be scanned and location. It covers the UK, Europe and pretty much the rest of the world. Great site and service.
If you want you photos, negatives or slides scanned try us, but if you can’t, now you know where to look.