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.
Monday, November 21, 2011
Monday, November 7, 2011
Ho Ho Ho
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.
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.
Sunday, October 23, 2011
Scan, Service, Services, Photo and 'S'
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.
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.
Sunday, October 16, 2011
Final Cut - Video File Conversion
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.
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.
Thursday, October 6, 2011
Scanner Smashing - the movie
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.
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.
Tuesday, September 6, 2011
Best Results?
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.
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.
Saturday, September 3, 2011
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