Scanning description

• 11 megapixel digital image - upgradable to 14 and 18 megapixels
• Cleaned and scanned by hand
• Manual dust removal available
• Brightness and contrast enhancement
• Free return delivery when you spend £30.00
• Free courier collection and return on large orders
• Physical cleaning of the slide to improve the image quality

What this service scans

• Standard 35mm black and white film negatives
• Singular frames or in strips of up to 6 frames

The problems with black and white film

The normal process of using infrared light to detect and remove the fine surface imperfections on the film cannot be used on black and white films due to the silver halide on the surface of the film interfering with the infrared light. Our solution is to manually remove the imperfections during post processing using dust and scratch removal filters and Adobe Photoshop cloning techniques to remove the imperfections.

For this reason, the cost of transferring black and white film is greater when compared to colour film. You can opt for us not to remove the scratches, therefore reducing the cost per frame, but unless you are planning to edit the images yourself you will likely be unsatisfied with the results.

Example

In the example below you can see a number of spots and scratches on the scanned image. Manually processing the image removes the imperfections leaving a clearer image. The contrast levels are also adjusted to give a more pleasing result.

Repaired by hand

We always recommend the Manual repair service in order to get a satisfactory image from your images, this is even more important with black and white negatives due to the problems with dust and scratch detection.