Kodachrome Scanning at Labs

jglass

Member
Joined
Jul 20, 2007
Messages
399
Location
Austin
Format
Multi Format
I've had bad luck with scans of Kodachrome from my local pro lab: a consistent sickly cyan color cast, esp. in the shadows. They said they didn't have kodachrome settings on their scanner. Sounds like laziness to me.

So I decided to get a cd from Dwaynes with my last processing order. SAME THING! I was really surprised, assuming Dwaynes would have auto settings that would get me in the ball park. The cyan shift is real and somewhat extreme so that the scans look nothing like the slides themselves.

I just want scans that I can use on the web to convey the impression of the slide, whithout a bunch of color balance computer time, which I'm very bad at. The whole reason I shoot film is to avoid a lot of post-processing.

I doubt if it will help, but when I get home later I'll post a sample.

Has anyone else had this problem with Dwaynes? Is there an alternative, other than buying a high end film scanner, when all I want is small jpgs for the web?

Thanks

Jeff
 

mrladewig

Member
Joined
Mar 5, 2009
Messages
44
Location
Colorado Spr
Format
4x5 Format
I've got a ton of old kodachromes around, but I've never tried to scan any. I can throw them on my Nikon LS-4000 and Epson 4990 to see what's going on. I have no doubt that the cyan cast can be eliminated in the scanning step. If they scan without any trouble with default settings on my LS-4000 then I can think of a few service providers that offer scans on the newer LS-5000 for cheap.
 
OP
OP

jglass

Member
Joined
Jul 20, 2007
Messages
399
Location
Austin
Format
Multi Format
Thanks for your response. Let me know what you find if you do any scanning but i need the goofy LABS to figure out what the settings should be. Isn't it fairly simple and more or less an automatic process once you get the settings dialed in right in the scanner software?

BTW do you know another forum to ask this on?

Why is this forum so inactive? Any idea.? I'm tempted to ask over at APUG whymore don't go over here.

jg
 
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