Starting this year, Cine 16 will be offering a film scanning service! Please note that this will only be for still images (formats up to 8×10).
*If you’re renting a film camera from us and want to use our film scanning service, your first roll of film (standard methods, i.e. Nikon scanner, or standard camera scan) is free! You can hand the roll of developed film over to us when you return your camera.
I think it is necessary. I was on a YouTube binge the other day, and I watched a video of someone getting into film from digital shooting, and he was going on and on about how he loves the “imperfections” of his film shots. Real poetic shit. He really romanticized the look of grainy, muddy-colored, badly scanned film. Which I think is a shame. I actually hate bad scans, I despise the smeared greens and browns from improperly used scanners, and to me there really is nothing “romantic”, or poetic about it.
There is nothing worse than being super excited to get your negs back from the lab, only to get dusty, muddy, “washed out” scans back with them. It’s a huge let down, becuase the entire process can be expensive and time consuming. So my goal with offering film scans is to give you cleaner scans of your film, and another opttion here in the UK. Rich colors, blacks that are deep, and whites that are clean and bright.
There are two options for film scanning.
Option #1: Nikon Coolscan 9000 (this will be labeled as the “Scanner option”)
For this option I’m using a Coolscan 9000, and processing the negatives through VueScan, Negative Lab Pro, or Film2Grain. The default option will be VueScan, so if you don’t choose, that is what they’ll be delivered in and in all honesty, that has been the method that has rendered the best results for me personally. This will deliver a look that I think is very clean, and crisp, but doesn’t deviate too far from what most people expect to see from good scans.
Options for the Coolscan will start at £10.00 per 135 roll (£8.00 for 24 exposures), and £12.00 per 120 roll. Please note that we cannot scan formats larger than 120 with this option, and the price will change depending on whether your roll has been pre-cut, and also the output quality that you desire. If your roll is cut into single frames, this option will be £1.50 per frame with a minimum order of 10 frames.
Option #2: Camera scanning (GFX 100S)
We’re using a Fujifilm GFX100S as the camera for this option, combined with a Contax 645 120mm F4 Makro lens. Our light source is the Negative Supply 8×10 99CRI Light Source Pro. Meaning we can scan pretty much scan all of the most common consumer film formats.
I chose the the light source for its high fidelity and the ability to ‘scan’ up to 8×10, and I chose the GFX 100S for its pixel shift ability so that we can capture red, green and blue color information at each pixel. For this one there will be options depending on how large of a file you will need, but please keep in mind that for the pixel-shift option these files are very large, and so you may need a decent computer to properly handle them (files are usually around 1.5GB per file or around a 23,000 x 17,000 pixel resolution).
We will also offer a standard (without using pixel-shift) ‘scan’ using the GFX for smaller files as well.
The ‘standard’ camera scan options will start £15.00 per 135 roll (£12.00 for 24 exposures), and £20.00 per roll of 120.
The pixel shift ‘higher quality’ camera scan will start at £40.00 per roll of 135 (£32.00 for 24 exposures), and £48.00 per rol of 120. Prices will start at £9.00 for a single frame in this option.
If you need a large format scan, please message us at film@ccdcine16.com. Also if you need your film developed, we can do so for an additional fee of £7.00 per roll of color in any format, and £12.00 for black and white film in any format. Please note that the film will be developed by a partner, not us.
We can also offer same-day delivery for orders placed before 12PM noon London time. The additional fee for this is £15.00 per 5 rolls, and your order will be sent to you via Dropbox by the end of the day.
As this is something that is a bit complicated, I will be releasing a video to hopefully show the difference between the options that we offer for everyone to make an informed decision, and also compare scans using the methods listed above to your typical lab scans.
Let me know if you have any questions. You can click on the “Film Scans” button at the top menu for more information.