Scanning old film negatives – Scancafe
I’m sure you have lots of old film negatives and slides in shoe boxes. You may or may not have developed these into photos. I recently used ScanCafe to digitize about 380 negatives into digital jpeg files. These are the steps:
- Find your film negatives
- Print a UPS shipping label from the ScanCafe web-site.
- Ship your negatives in a sturdy padded envelope. [I also suggest you make a note of each set of negatives.]
- You can easily track your package on the UPS and ScanCafe web-sites.
- ScanCafe wil notify you when they receive it.
- Wait about 40 days (July 2 to August 14 for me) for the negatives to be scanned.
- Go online and pick the ones you want and only pay for them. [ScanCafe ended up sending me all my pictures] The site is easy to navigate and to view and to select the pictures you want.
- ScanCafe will cut a CD or DVD with you pictures and you should receive it 3-5 business days. You also get your original negatives back.
Cost: My total cost for 344 negatives (I selected 344 pictures) incl shipping was $80.90. (.21c per negative and .23c per picture)
Quality: The scan pictures were of a very high quality.
Service: I was very impressed with the ongoing status messages I received.
Pros: Low cost, high quality pictures and DVD, user friendly.
Cons: It takes about 4-6 weeks to scan your negatives.
Competing services: DigitalPickle, Old-Photo, BritePix, DigMyPics, Larsen, and MySpecialPhotos.
Overall rating: I will use this service again and highly recommend it.
