UK - how to digitise large number of photo negatives?

January 15, 2016 12:22 AM

I have a huge number of negatives from my days using a film camera. I would like to get them converted to digital files. Is there anywhere in the UK, ideally London or mail-order, where I can get this done, and how much is it likely to cost? I would rather pay someone else to do it than, for example, buying myself a photo scanner - although I do have a standard scanner I don't think this can be used to scan negatives in this way.
posted by ontheradio to Technology (6 answers total)

Response by poster: Forgot to say, they are 35mm negatives.
posted by ontheradio at 12:23 AM on January 15, 2016

Back when I was still shooting film, I used Peak Imaging a fair bit for high-quality processing and scanning.

Fair warning, they're not cheap and I probably last used them around a decade ago, but the quality was a significant step above anything you could find on the high street. For 100+ images it's 60p per image.
posted by parm at 1:00 AM on January 15, 2016

Seconding Peak Imaging if you're going to outsource the work. Their service is excellent and I use them for all my film processing needs. Their price list for archiving starts at £1.50 per frame, so this isn't going to be cheap.

Alternatively, a decent scanner for negatives -- and this depends on the quality you want -- needn't be hugely expensive. An Epson v550 is currently £160ish on Amazon.
posted by gmb at 1:09 AM on January 15, 2016 [1 favorite]

I used scancafe to scan 500 family photos for ~$164. They will scan 35mm negatives - at $.33 each or $.22 if you buy a value kit. They are in India - you ship a box - they scan and send back. They were much faster than their websites times and sent me texts updating me on status throughout the process. I used them to scan prints not negatives but was pleased with the results.
posted by leslies at 5:26 AM on January 15, 2016

I too like scancafe, but they only take orders from the US and Canada at the moment.
posted by nightwood at 6:19 AM on January 15, 2016

I too like scancafe. I don't live in the US, but posted the negatives during an airport transit! You could potentially use a mail forwarding service to return the negatives to you. If you do use scancafe, it's worth signing up to their mailing list and waiting for a 40%-off discount code.
posted by superfish at 12:19 PM on January 15, 2016 [1 favorite]