EWA scans some of my favourite negatives

I've long  been wondering what it would be like to have my favourite negatives scanned and printed  professionally. 

Last week I sent four 35mm colour negatives to EWA Digital in London for high resolution scans, dust removal and colour correction.

I'm pretty impressed with the results. 

One is of a dog at Grindley Brook in October 2003.  His name was Bruno, and he was - if I remember right - the owner of The Lockside Stores at Grindley Brook Locks.  (Many dogs do own their masters.)

He's one of those soft dogs who bring you sticks to throw. He approached me hopefully as I rose up in the locks, hence my low vantage point, and I had the camera flash primed too.

He's a sweetie of a dog, so the red-eye and slavering jaws only serves to make him look fiercer, a neat effect. 

The top photo here is EWA's scan, the lower one is my own earlier effort, to show the difference.  Click each one in turn to see the comparative difference - both images here are 737 pixels wide.

It shouldn't be hard to be impressed with EWA's work - the final scan (at 4,500x6,500 pixels) represents a 30 megapixel image, three times the detail of my own scan. 

It's not perfect; in particular you can see that the professional scan cuts off part of the image, and I might stress next time that I don't want them to crop the image.  And I'm tempted to tweak the contrast/colour balance further to suit my own memory of the scene.  Realistically, though, it's as good as it gets, and provides a richer, crisper, more colourful image.

But you might not feel it's worth it.  A good scan like this is £10 per negative, plus VAT and about £5 for the CD and P&P.  I'll probably only do it for my favourite photos, but it's definitely worth it for the best, and professional photo libraries will probably expect it.

Comments

[Halfie]

It shows how good "old-fashioned" film was (is). I often think that "progress" isn't all it's cracked up to be. Look at early amateur snaps and compare black and white with colour. There's so much more detail in the black and white photos.

And there's talk of switching off the analogue radio transmitters in just a few years' time. Well, sorry, but digital doesn't always mean better.