Equipment
I use a semi-professional quality German-designed Plustek OpticFilm scanner with some pretty clever software, specially designed for 35mm negatives and transparencies. I can also scan 110 and 126 negatives from ‘instamatic’ cameras, although the quality of these images is not as good as 35mm due to the size of the media.
I don’t have the equipment to scan large format 2½ x 2½ inch film or other formats – a more specialised laboratory would need to scan these for you.
Resolution and file types
I produce high-resolution (around 3500 x 5000 pixels) scans which are saved in the uncompressed TIFF format. These can be up to 40-50Mb and will produce high quality prints of up to A4 size, and potentially acceptable prints of larger size than that.
I also provide JPG format copies in high resolution (around 4Mb), suitable for producing 10x15cm prints and web resolution (around 400Kb), suitable for social media sharing.
Image orientation
While I take considerable care to try and scan transparencies ‘the right way around’, you will know your photographs better than I do. Occasionally companies making slides would change the way they mounted them, and photographers didn’t always load the films correctly. If there is a problem with an image being ‘the wrong way around’, most personal computers make it easy to ‘flip’ images so they are the right way around. If that sounds too technical, just get in touch and I can help.
Numbering and order
Again, I try to scan each film or set of transparencies in the correct order, when it is apparent. In some cases this won’t be possible, if a collection of slides has become jumbled. Again, you will know your photographs better than anyone, so renaming the files to reflect the order you prefer is easy with most computer systems.