sigh... Costco

[nutwithacamera]

I've had nothing but great work and service from my local Costco for film processing over the past year or so since I started shooting film. I'm one of those people that went backwards and started with DSLRs, but felt something was missing, tried some film, and then fell in love with it. Anyhow, the last batch at Costco, all of my scanned CDs came back with corrupted images. No problem - they just rescanned the film and burned me new CDs and then all was good. I picked up a new roll yesterday though, and now this...



UGH.

Now I gotta go back again, and have them re-scan again. The prints and negs are fine, just their scans are FUBAR.

I've been sending my stuff to a very professional mail-order shop which does top notch processing and very high res scans, except it adds up in a hurry ($$$). Costco has been great, but now lots of trouble with their scanning. This is sooo frustrating and annoying. I'm almost to the point of wanting to buy a scanner, but I've had a lot of bad luck with them in the past, and the fancy ones aren't cheap either.

Anyhow just venting.

[icuttl]

One of the many reasons that I switched from film to digital. You don't have any control on the processing from a photo lab.

[nutwithacamera]

Well the film processing has always been great. Negs and prints are perfect. Have never had any issues with that. Just their scanning or CD burning system as of late. I can get much higher resolution scans from the pro lab that I use, but boy do you pay for it. I guess I might have to look into getting a scanner. With the money I've spend at the pro lab, I could have gotten one already, LOL.

[xxloverxx]

Nut, if I were you I'd have Costco do all the scanning and select maybe 2-5 photos every month/2 months/3 months/etc and have it scanned professionally.

Have you complained, or at least notified their staff about the problems you've been having?

Luckily over here in HK we still have plenty (compared to a lot of other places) of labs that sell you film, process, scan and print it at the same place (2 hours) so if one goes wrong I can always walk 2 minutes to the next one…

One thing you can be happy about with Costco however is the lack of dust on your scans; mine usually have a few specs that need to be spotted.

I would advise against scanning your own film unless you've got:
1) a lot of patience (with consumer/prosumer scanners (that is, the ones that fit on your desk and not go on the floor the size of your desk) it _will_ be very slow to mount 1 strip at a time then slide through each negative one by one, colour correct it and press 'scan') - the one time I tried scanning film myself, I got terrible colours (would've required hours of post processing to fix it) and it still took me 3 hours for 36 exposures. It was the most painful photographic moment of my life

2) a completely dust free environment (do _not_ attempt to wipe dust off film, only blow, or you'll scratch it like crazy)

3) Latex gloves (not needed but suggested…skin oil and all)

I guess the decision to scan yourself depends on how much time you're willing to put into it - personally I prefer having my lab do it for me while I go out and burn more film

[spystyle]

Cute baby

[andrew7]

Nutty, I have all my film developed at a local Sams. I found out they only scan images to 300dpi on the cd, the pictures were only about 1 meg each. I asked for a higher resolution but they couldn't do it. I bought an Epson v500 with ICE. I quick scan to see which ones I like the most then go back and scan at a high resolution and PP in Lightroom. My old photo software was limiting but LR is very nice compared to hard to use Photoshop.

[nutwithacamera]

I finally got back to Costco to get these fixed. After 10 minutes of waiting in line, and 10 minutes of arguing with them, I finally got them to re-run the scans. They kept on saying the lines were on the negatives. NO, they were not. If the negatives were bad, then why did the prints come out clean? They were busy and just didn't want to re-run scans. Considering how little they charge for this I almost don't blame them, but still. I'm not an idiot. It ain't the scans if the prints are clean.

Anyhow, NOW they're fixed.



Contrast is hotter on these and a bit much for Portra, but I can tweak that. It's supposed to look like Portra, not Velvia, LOL.

The Costco scans are very nice, when their scanner isn't loaded with dirt, have something stuck on the scan beams, or their CD burner doesn't crap out and give you a bunch of corrupted files. Nice 3087x2048 scans and 2.5 MB files for something stupid like $3.50 including developing.

[spystyle]

Baby !!!!!!!