Where to get a 1958 color slide enhanced?

[ghar72]

My mother-in-law is in town and has a color slide of her parents from 1958. She’d like to get prints made from it but it’s too dark and grainy. Is there anywhere in WS to get the slide cleaned up and prints made off it? If not, recs off the peninsula? I read good reviews of Panda Photo on lower QA. We had some B&W work done with old photos at Moon Photo many years ago but I remember them being very expensive. But maybe that’s just the way with it when it comes to old images like this. Thanks for any leads!

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[Kevin]

On the peninsula:

Try Kit’s Camera at Jefferson Square.

Otherwise, Panda, Moon, and Capitol Hill Photo are all custom labs that do really great work! You are only talking ONE image, so it will not be that expensive.

Don’t let anyone fool you. Scanning an image like a slide to digital is simple and quick. The overhead is in the “artistic” labor of cleaning up the image. And even that is just a matter of simple software manipulation. Bottom line – $15 – 25 if you farm out the whole thing to a custom lab, and perhaps $5 or even free if you find a fellow WSB reader that will help you out.

The last option is to find someone here in WS that will scan an image for you – perhaps for a coffee gift card or something like that.

Sorry, I do not have a scanner, otherwise I would do it for you myself. There are also many online services that will scan it for you for less than $1, although you will need to send it to them in the mail.

.

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[ghar72]

Thanks Kevin! It’s good to have a price point to work with. And an idea of what needs to be done.

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[cjboffoli]

Don’t be surprised if you find the price to be considerably higher than Kevin’s best-case estimate. You are talking about a 53 year-old slide. The scanning process will be the easiest part. If you want reasonably good-looking prints there may be some restoration to be done. There will be dust and scratches to clean up, which is meticulous work. But a bigger issue may be the instability of the emulsion over all that time. Dyes age at different rates. So the color may be distorted, which may not be readily apparent looking at a dark and grainy slide.

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[clark5080]

I could do it for you. Not sure on the price I would want to take a look at the slide first. Much experience in running a high end drum scanner. i have a scanner at home or I could take it to work and do it on our drum scanner email for more info at jimclarkphoto at gmail dot com

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[Kevin]

@ghar

Check out this craigslist ad. This might be the person who did a bunch of scanning for me a while back.

Slide Scanning Services (with Dust/Scratch Removal) – $30 (NE Seattle)

Date: 2011-12-12, 5:56PM PST

Reply to: sale-7j4ss-2750201291@craigslist.org

I have a high quality slide/negative scanner, and I am offering slide scanning services for only 40 cents per slide for scans with ICE (which is a dust and scratch removal mechanism) and 30 cents without ICE. Bulk discount available. I use Nikon 5000 ED slide film scanner. 5000ED is the best equipment available for scanning 35mm slides. Scan is done at 4000 dpi, which gives approximately 24 megapixel images from a standard 35mm slide.

I am located in Lake City Way Area of Seattle. Please email or call me at 206-724-8496 if interested. Thank you for reading this post.

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[ghar72]

Wow! Thanks for all the input and offers to help. I have no knowledge in this dept (and neither does she when it comes to old pics like this) so all information has been super informative. Thanks!

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[Alex]

I have an older slide scanner you can borrow for as long as need if you want to do it yourself.

http://www.imaging-resource.com/SCAN/DSEII/DSEIIA.HTM

-Alex

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[Lindsey]

As much as I love to keep it in West Seattle, I would not take your decades-old negs to Kits. My go-to pro lab in Seattle is definitely Panda. I’d trust Panda with anything. Moon Photo is also good.

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[Author]

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