Why do my photos look muddy and pixelated?

[bananafish_05]

Just got these scans back from the photo processing place and they look really pixelated. Anyone know what went wrong - the processing, developing, equipment, my skill as a photographer? And, can anything be done to salvage them?

I'm thinking it might be a dodgy scanning job and hoping that if I rescan the negatives somewhere better, they'll turn out much nicer? Is it worth going back and asking the same place to rescan at a higher quality?

For reference, I shot them on a Leica M6 and Voigtlander 50mm lens on Portra 400

 

[koraks]

Yeah, those are poor scans. If you want to shoot film regularly and need digital files, I'd either invest in a decent scanner or make a setup that allows you to digitally photograph your negatives with a digital camera and macro lens.

Please note that your question probably fits better elsewhere on the forum since it's more about digital imagery than about the film aspect of the process.

 

[bananafish_05]

Thanks @koraks! Yeah developing and scanning negatives is definitely on my project list! Still fairly new to the hobby and I'm finding paying for developing and scanning is expensive, especially when the results turn out like that. Do you think by getting the negatives rescanned somewhere else will fix this batch in the meantime?

And thanks for the heads up re better place for the post - I wasn't sure where to post it tbh.

 

[cramej]

Just low resolution scanning.

 

[wiltw]

Just low resolution scanning.

^ the photos are about 3000 x 2000 pixels, or 6 Megapixels. Not the most horrid I have gotten from a film processor, but certainly not high resolution either.

not sure where your 'muddy' comment comes from.

 

[shutterfinger]

Typical proof scans from a lab.

 

[grat]

^ the photos are about 3000 x 2000 pixels, or 6 Megapixels. Not the most horrid I have gotten from a film processor, but certainly not high resolution either.

not sure where your 'muddy' comment comes from.

Looks like a low quality jpeg as well-- Most of my 6MP jpegs are 2-4 megabytes, and these are 1mb and 800k.

 

[Bormental]

@grat is right. This is not just the resolution, these JPEGs are just horrible. Suddenly I feel better about the lab I use. They give me small previews (3-5MP), but they're good enough for me to judge focus, color & exposure so I can decide which frames to scan at high-res.

@bananafish_05 your negatives are way, way, way better than these scans.

 

[removedacct1]

Labs in general don't give you the best scans possible - for that you have to do it yourself. No lab, no matter how good a reputation they have, will do scans as carefully and with as much attention to detail as you will, yourself.

 

[Agulliver]

Poor scanning. 3000x2000 isn't the worst option but you should be getting JPEGs back at 2Mb or more. The compression is losing a lot of the detail especially in the first photo. The images also look like the lab has simply put your film through without setting up the scanner for the film you used (Portra) and without even glancing at the screen. It is possible to get 6MP scans that actually look quite good as long as you're not planning on making large prints or doing lots of editing work. I'm guessing their scanner was set up for consumer film such as Kodak Gold perhaps. One gets the sense that those images could look a lot better.

It's a bit of a crap shoot with labs and scanning. Find a lab that does a better job. I've used professional labs which charge extra for supposedly higher resolution scans and checking every frame by hand and got worse results than walking down to my local camera shop, paying just £4 for processing and scanning. You can usually do a better job with a flatbed scanner at home but that also takes time and investment in the hardware. What some people do is have the lab make basic scans and then choose which negatives to rescan, paying more attention. Or have those negatives traditionally printed.

If you get really lucky and you have a lab you can physically get to, they may even permit you to sit with them while they scan your negatives so you can give them pointers to what you're hoping to see in the final image. I've actually had that at Snappy Snaps, of all places.