The Digital Insider

My original plan was to finalize part 2 of the series I started here a couple of weeks ago, but then I came across this piece on CNBC yesterday and thought it would be interesting for our readers.

David Pogue from the New York Times did a piece on “AFLS” - Analog Format Loss Syndrome. As he mentions in the piece, so much of the equipment out there available for consumers are simply too difficult for the average user’s patience. Not to mention that the resulting quality is lower than expected.

This really reaffirms ScanDigital’s value proposition. We completely remove the leg work from converting your photos, slides and negatives into digital format or transferring your old videos and film into a usable digital format.

To see the video, please click here (CNBC wouldn’t let me embed the video in this post):

Do you suffer from AFLS?

ScanDigital has recently been working with many home organizers in the effort to help simplify the lives of their clients. Most of us have a system of storing our photos, slides and negatives that is somewhat similar; partially labeled and piled up in a closet somewhere. You may be the only one who is even able to decipher what is where. Now, with the help of ScanDigital you can store those images away neatly and have full access to your images on disc and online anywhere in the world (even organized into folders no less!).

When sending their collection of images and movies into ScanDigital, customers can label there rolls of film, carousels of slides and photo albums so that those same names and groupings appear when viewing them on your computer. ScanDigital’s scanning service means no more searching for twenty minutes to find those photographs from that great vacation 10 years ago. After sending them to ScanDigital they will be right at your fingertips, in high quality and digitally enhanced.

Along with the digitally organized images ScanDigital offers a digital photo frame that we will preload for the customer with their newly scanned images. These photo frames look great and are good space savers as you can rotate through many images on the same frame. The photo frames also make perfect gifts for loved ones.

I recently took a large bin of images out of my parent’s house and had them processed at our El Segundo facility. Because of our great turnaround time I was able to put the bin back before my mom even noticed it was missing. When I gave her the DVD loaded with all the images in labeled folders she was thrilled. It was great to see her reaction as she was amazed that our slide scanning and editing restored old slides that she was sure were faded beyond repair.  She had forgotten what was even in the bin in the first place and now she is enjoying her images and the bin has been put into storage!

If you were to start exploring the process of getting your images scanned into a digital format you would quickly see that most often the price to scan your photos is lower than the price to scan your slides and negatives. You are probably thinking, “Great! I will just send in my photos to be scanned and hold onto my negatives for safe-keeping.” Unfortunately for a small savings you would be keeping yourself from receiving the highest possible quality.

When scanning a print you are not working from the original material (negative) so essentially it is similar to making a copy of a copy. No matter how much we can do to adjust an image and while the results are often great, the results from scanning negatives or scanning slides almost always allows for a higher quality digital image. Because of how the slides and negatives are chemically processed it allows for a color quality that cannot be met on a standard photographic print.

Many consumers assume that because of the larger size of the prints they would create better digital images but with the high quality slide and negative scanners available that is just not the case. At ScanDigital we use Nikon scanners specifically designed for 35mm negative scanning and 35mm slide scanning. They are designed to scan at a very high dpi (we offer both 2000 dpi and 4000 dpi) with Digital Ice technology that automatically fixes very small scratches and any small dust particles that didn’t get completely removed during the slide and negative cleaning.

Slide scanning is a particularly important thing to do as the life of these slides is short-lived. Ektachrome slides for example can start deteriorating rapidly after just thirty years. Many customers express concern over shipping their irreplaceable slides across the country, believing that they are safer tucked away in the closet. Unfortunately by not preserving them digitally they are suffering irreparable damage as time goes on. ScanDigital is integrated with UPS for safe, secure and trackable shipping so don’t wait, save your precious memories by sending in your slides today!