XtremeCamera

Until very recently everything I knew about scanning 35mm slides and negatives were limited to the disastrous times I had with a Nikon Coolscan back in the nineties. I had tried, unsuccessfully, to achieve a decent quality scan using a Coolscan but each time I tried the end result was just awful. I finally gave up and offered the scanner to a friend who might make better use of it than I did. Achieving a good scan is much more complicated than simply putting in the slide, bringing up the interface on your computer and hitting the scan button. I mean there are BOOKS on scanning slides!

I made a decision that until the day came when I could afford to have an expert scan my work with a drum scanner or something like it, than my images from those times would remain in the analog world.
That day has arrived, finally, although a bit differently than I thought.

FotoBridge – Professional Scanning At An Affordable Rate

This is a review of a company in New Jersey that offers scanning services for slides, negatives, and prints at a great price. And better yet, these scans are of excellent quality, far better than I expected.

While there are many companies out there that offer scanning services this one is by far the best I have tested this year. Out of the six companies I’ve used over the past 3 months FotoBridge not only offered the best prices, their scans were better quality and the options, such as higher DPI, were less expensive. I kept getting the feeling when I was dealing with them that they do this work because they love doing the work, and there was never a hint that they would even consider gouging the customer or even attempting to sell the customer something they didn’t need. It was strange, they did exactly what they said they would without trying to up-sell me on any other service.

The Time Before Digital Or Why FotoBridge Is Relevant Today

If your career in photography began before the digital camera revolution you have undoubtedly collected your fair share of slides, negatives, and prints from the pre-digital era. And if you want to use those images on a website, or a photo gallery, send one in an email, or submit them for publication, the film must be digitized.

Sending your film out to a company that specializes in scanning makes more sense than trying to scan them yourself unless you are experienced in scanning, and if you are experienced than this article really isn’t for you. A good company, one that you feel comfortable doing business with, is one that will take the burden off your shoulders and place it on their own. FotoBridge is very much like that; you deliver your slides, negative, or prints to them and then just let them do their thing. In a few days UPS will show up at your door and hand you all the original material you sent FotoBridge along with a DVD or two that contain the digitized version of those slides, negatives, and prints. When you slip one of the DVD’s into your computer you will like what you see, and as you Import those images into a new Adobe Lightroom catalog you will in the preview window all those images that you haven’t seen in years and the memories of making them will flood your mind. You will find yourself in a happy place, and the cost of getting there wasn’t very much at all. That’s what its like to do business with FotoBridge.

A Note of Caution!

There are many companies that offer scanning services. Some are better than others. Some actually try to make a good scan while others are downright rip off companies. You need to know whom you are dealing with before you send any of your important work to them for scanning.

Every company that offers scanning services should be looked at closely, and if at all possible you should send as few slides or negatives as you can in order to see the quality of their scans. Trust me when I say that not all scanning services are equal.

Some companies charge a lot and deliver horrible scans, some companies charge very little and deliver even less. But, if you look hard enough, you’ll find companies that charge less than you expect and deliver scans better than you expected, although they are few and far between. Never ship a large quantity of slides or negatives to any company without having some experience with them. I trust FotoBridge with my scans because in my initial ‘test’ of the company I sent in slides that truly put them to the test and they passed with flying colors. In addition to the well-exposed work I threw in many under exposed, over exposed, scratched, bent, and otherwise horrible slides just to see how much effort they would put into the scans.

Would You Pay 32 Cents For A Great Scan? Of Course You Would

I have seen companies advertise 35mm slide scanning at a buck a slide, or more, and I have seen companies offering much lower pricing. FotoBridge offers a ‘different’ pricing structure that is both flexible and affordable. Some might even say too affordable after seeing that some companies are charging a buck a scan.

I took advantage of the plan on your pricing structure that allows you to send in up to 500 slides for $159.95, which works out to an astoundingly low .32 cents per slide/scan. This pricing structure is the basic plan; 2000dpi, no printed index card, and a single DVD with two sets of scans, the 2000dpi JPG and a “web” folder containing another set of the images at a smaller size that you can throw up on your webpage quickly and easily (although I wouldn’t advise it). Considering that you can increase the resolution to 3000dpi for another $19.95 or 4000dpi for $49.95, and choose TIF files instead of JPG for no additional charge is amazing in itself. This pricing structure sounded way too good to be true and it wasn’t until I received the scans back that I knew FotoBridge would get all my future business.

Things To Know Going In Or Why Reading The FAQ Is Important

The timing for this project, from choosing 500 slides of varying quality and age and subject matter, to sending them off to FotoBridge couldn’t have come at a worse time for me personally. I didn’t have the time to spend reading all the material they have up on the FotoBridge website, and I should have.

The FotoBridge website offers a lot of information that is important to read and understand so that you get the most out of the money you spend with them. Because of what I was dealing with personally I wound up just counting out the slides, stuffing them into business envelopes according to subject matter, age, etc, and then putting all the envelopes in a box, slapping a UPS shipping label on the box and dropping the box off at The UPS Store. I certainly didn’t want to do it this way but I was under the gun to get it done and I had to get it done.

While the basic package is fine for most people that use it, most serious photographers would rather perform their own postproduction work for instance. I did not bother to ask for the TIF format, and I would have gladly paid another nickel a slide for a 3000dpi scan.

I also allowed FotoBridge to use their standard enhancing software that does an incredible job for those customers that have no intention of performing any postproduction on the files. FotoBridge automatically orients the slide, sharpens the image, color corrects it, applies a bit of saturation, and overall produces a scan most people can use right off the DVD. Had I read the website I would have opted out of this feature and I would have done all the postproduction myself.

In addition to the extraordinary pricing and quality scans, their customer service is beyond belief. I sent an email to their customer support address to ask them how they “enhanced” the scans. I knew I would be writing about this experience and wanted to learn about their enhancing techniques. When they learned that I had wanted to do all the postproduction myself they sent me another DVD with my slides in TIF format and untouched by their enhancing software, at no charge. After speaking with the owner of the company I learned that they were going to make a more prominent offering of “Unprocessed” scans, which are scans that professional photographers, or even Photoshop users, would want; no enhancements, just a good, solid scan done by a professional using the very best scanning equipment.

FotoBridge Equipment – Top Shelf Scanners And More

For film and slide scanning FotoBridge uses Nikon SCS 5000s, Nikon SCS 9000s, and Epson scanners. For prints they use Kodak, Epson and HP scanners. At any given time they have about 30-40 scanners in-house. They replace scanners frequently and do most maintenance, calibrations, etc. in-house. Their workflow process must be exact in order to maintain the highest level of production. The first stop in the process is receiving and job prep, then to capture (scanning, including scan QA), then to processing (IDF – “black box” enhancements), then Quality Assurance (image editing, 100% visual inspection) and finally the fulfillment step (burn, print, test, options, pack, ship). Each step is vital to a smooth workflow.

Their process is multi-threaded (throughout the flow described above), meaning they keep most scanners and processes running on multiple jobs at any given time. Any given job can take parallel paths, which is one of many ways they optimize infrastructure and make improvements in the workflow.

The FotoBridge team includes people with various backgrounds, expertise and interests. Everyone shares a passion for photography and imaging. From academic to practical, they have working photographers, imaging technicians, people from the graphic arts communities, Apple devotees, and more. The extended team, which includes their business and marketing department, is about 25 people.

Things To Consider

As I mentioned above, FotoBridge can scan your slides, negatives, and even prints at a price point better than I have seen anywhere else, at a standard of quality I find almost hard to believe. But, consider the options before you order scans. Do you need TIF files or will JPG be okay? (Go with TIF), will you want to print large? If so, go with the 3000 or 4000 dpi scans. If your plans are for the web or any other display uses than a 2000-dpi scan will be fine.

Although you don’t need to spend a lot of time with each slide or negative you want scanned you should take some time to perhaps blow the dust off using a can of air, make sure the slide mount is okay, basically just make sure the slide is in decent shape and you will be very pleased with the outcome.

Most importantly, when sending your scans to any company, including FotoBridge, don’t send all your slides at one time. No matter which carrier you use, from FedEx to the Post Office, there is always a chance something will happen. Losing your entire collection of slides would be awful for anyone. Many professionals in the 70’s and 80’s had duplicate slides made of their most important work. If you have duplicates it might be worth sending those out for scanning while maintaining possession of the originals.

Bottom Line

With the quality and price that FotoBridge offers, along with the options, we now have a company that makes it affordable to bring over all the work we’ve created in the time before digital and introduce our older work to this strange new world. For myself it was a real kick to see some of the work I did in 1975 being displayed on a 2009 computer screen. It had been decades since I last saw those images. In addition, on the next order I will be sending over all my work that I was paid to produce over the years. All the magazine covers, model portfolios, pro football, basketball, and other sports I shot for various magazines, and they will once again have an audience.

So give your own slides and negatives a new life on your computer, in your iPhoto library or your online photo gallery. It’s affordable, even at a hefty number of slides or negatives, and best of all the scans FotoBridge does are better than you can get with a low-end consumer Nikon Coolscan.

John Manzione