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- Sell your old photographs via on-line Libraries or back to your clients
- Safeguard your photos by creating digital archives
- Add to your Digital Asset Management system
- Publish yourself and show the world what you've got
- Preserve your photographic legacy
- Effectively fix your pre-digital photographs - and sell them
- Save you time by digitising your photos within days instead of years
Oscans was created to service serious photographers that have a need to transit to digital photography, but have a legacy of analog photo media as prints, negatives and slides.
In order to do this, Oscans is set up to do high volume scanning from 135 film strips and mounted slides, and 120 film strips and single frames (up to 6x17, with ICE) as well as from prints. We can handle uncut rolls.
Unlike many professional scanning services, we are not forcing you to decide what sized prints you want ahead of scanning (some places typically offer you "300 dpi at A4"). We believe that most people simply want the most pixels for their dollar. You tell us what you need.
Oscans uses "pro-lab" high-end Kodak scanners (HR 500 Plus Film Scanner) and other equipment, but our very low overheads means that we are extremely competitive with pricing while providing flexible bulk scanning services.
We have found that many people have many questions about our simple service. Some of the answers are below; if you want more, then please go to Frequently Asked Questions or contact us directly.
Why create digital archives? |
- To make a back-up copy in case of disaster
- To commercially distribute your content
- To distribute copies to friends and family
- To re-work favourite images for printing or publishing
- To manage via digital asset management systems
A great thing to do with scans of old negatives is to re-construct the exposure and composition. How many times did you get prints back that just did not look "right"? You can now do those things with colour photos that you used to in the darkroom with black and white. You can even remove blemishes and rectify compositional compromises.
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What to do with film cameras? |
Keep them! You can get a lot of scans with your existing film gear. You can keep doing this until the digital systems become good enough and cheap enough for you to convert. Why sell your film gear now for digital equipment that is not the same quality? Why give up your super wide-angle lenses? If you use medium format, the conversion cost to all-digital is in the order of $40-50,000 or more.
Oscans can get around 20 megapixels (60 megabytes) from 135 film, and around 40 megapixels (120 megabytes) from 120. In fact, we can get around 90 megapixels from 6x17 - and we may be the only people in the world who can do that on a film scanner with Digital ICE. You can shoot a lot of film until you wait for digital formats to catch up. Would you replace all your digital equipment again when next year's models are released? With Oscans prices, you can get a lot of pixels for your dollar.
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What is the process? |
You send us your developed film. (We can now also facilitate film processing.) We can accept mounted slides and even prints. All negatives are handled with clean white gloves, and our scanning equipment does not contact the film surface with anything except light. |
Individual negatives? |
Please put stickers on the negative sleeves to prevent ambiguities. You may also want to send a list of negatives; use the numbered silver film processing sticker that your lab put on the film to help identify them. DO NOT MARK THE NEGATIVES, only the sleeves. The files will be numbered sequentially as "smith-001, smith-002, etc", and the filename may not be the same as the negative number. |
Uncut rolls? |
If the rolls are uncut, we can do high resolution scans from the whole roll at a great price. This applies to both negatives and positives. The frame numbers may be misnumbered by 1-2 frames, as the first image on a roll can be "XA", then "00", followed by "0", which causes numbering ambiguities. |
Mounted slides? |
Yes, even glass mounted slides. Just send us the slides in air proof container. Alternatively, contact us to make an appointment for us to scan while-you-wait. We are able to scan hundreds of slides per hour. |
Do you handle Kodachrome? |
Yes. We even have an excellent electronic cleaning process called Digital ICE for Kodachrome. |
More Questions?
Special Services? |
We are constantly developing new services. If you have a special requirement, call us on 1300 138 970 or click here to e-mail us. |
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