Anyone try ScanCafe?

And if they lose your negs/chromes in shipment, or damage them in the scanner's transport (possible w/Nikon and other scanners)?

Losing in shipment would be possible with any service. Damage in the scanner is possible even if you do it yourself. (Not that scanning 110 yourself is an option.. do you know a way to do it?)

My original question, however, was whether anyone had experience with ScanCafe.

--Marc

No.

but i normaly send stuff to well know place just at 10min drive...not oversea to have them scan..so let say they dont loose it, they dont damage it..but they just forget to do it or to call you back..what can you do if it done in India? sail over there yourself to see whats the problem?

* if you do go, please bring me some cheap tshirt made from a 6years old kid, they are so expensive when they are made by adult in canada.

http://photo.net/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=00NNyr

Here is a good, independent review of ScanCafe from another Photo.net user. I'm certainly biased, but I think he makes a good point that sending images to ScanCafe is as safe, if not safer, than most other services. Thomas Hobbs - Dec. 10th http://photo.net/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=00NNyr Thanks Damon ScanCafe

I would like to digitize several thousand 10- to 25-year old negatives, a job with a degree of urgency measured in months or years. ScanCafe seemed right for that so I decided to try it.

I sent a small test order (about 100 negs) to ScanCafe just before Christmas.

After a few status update e-mails (received, processing, etc.), I received this January 15 email:

***

I am writing today to provide you with an update on your ScanCafe Order including a new estimated online date for Order #XXXXXXX.

In December, ScanCafe was the recipient of phenomenal editorial reviews in Money Magazine, Popular Photography, as well as other publications. Although great news for us, this significantly increased demand for our services during the holiday season. Although these were very welcome reviews, they were for the most part unexpected and have created a backlog in our scanning process. Therefore, we have moved your online date back.

Your new online date estimate for Order #XXXXXXX is February 18, 2008.

We are sorry for the delay but our goal is to provide the highest quality scans so we can not take short-cuts to get your order completed more quickly. We know you will appreciate this in the end, and we greatly appreciate your patience and understanding in this matter.

We will be increasing our capacity and hope to reduce this turn around time as best as we can. Please don't hesitate to contact us with questions at [. . .]

* * *

2 notes:

1. Be warned about this delay. Delay per se is no problem for me, but may not be for you.

2. I am hoping this is in fact a general problem for them, and not any problem specific to my order. Have others received similar messages?

Thanks.

"Why outsource when you can go local in NYC?"

Well if you're offering something that makes your scans worth maybe fifty times what Scancafe charge, maybe you'd better say. Being in Manhattan might be a reason for maybe 2% of the people here.

I have to say that from what I've read about Scancafe I'm quite impressed and inclined to give them a try. If I want a dozen slides scanned I'll either do it myself on a film scanner or get a drum scan made locally depending on the application. But for big batches of a back catalogue I think these prices are a very attractive alternative to spending a huge chunk of life in front of a scanner, and you never know I might end up being able to sell my scarcely used Nikon 9000 and use the money to get all my portfolio (save those already scanned by stock libraries and printers) scanned on the same machine. And I am always impressed by businesses that realise they have an issue and proactively communicate why and new dates to their customers. Most businesses keep their heads down and hope the customers won't notice- not usually a good sign.

"bring me some cheap tshirt made from a 6years old kid"

I thought they'd stopped this sort of thing :-). Or did you mean from an an old goat?

It's still slower than advertised, and I think price went up a bit in last month or so, but my experience with ScanCafe was good. Interestingly, I compared scanned negatives that they did for 19 cents with scans of same negatives done locally -- I believe by our excellent professional photo place in DC, Chrome, for about $5. First take: from a distance the local scans looked much better - colors brighter & less muddy-looking. Second take: the ScanCafe scans had far more detail, the local scans pumped up the brightness of colors and washed out the details. I could easily do the same to the ScanCafe scans with Photoshop.

I could upload examples if people really want to see.

Being a competitor of ScanCafe I am most certainly biased.
I always try to buy American and try to skip Chinese or such products wherever I can. No need to bring up where all our manufacturing jobs went just so we can save a few bucks. ScanCafe is exactly the same thing for image scanning. Just ditch a US job and have some folks in India do the job at a lot lower income level.
However, I see a huge advantage in being a smaller competitor. I take the time with each customer and they can call anytime to find out their status or make special requests (like placing them into folders, giving the folders certain names, DVD slide shows with custom chapters and labels, having their disc custom-printed, keeping the slides in sequence etc.). There simply isn't an easy apples-to-apples comparison possible since I don't think that they have many steps that are included in our price (e.g. cleaning the slide before scanning, etc.). All our customers' images are PS enhanced and there are a lot of other quality improvements included in the price as well. Try to do this with ScanCafe. I guess this is why most of my business comes from repeat customers.
If you look for a cheap way that costs US jobs and gives you limited customer service, go with ScanCafe. As with everything in life, you get what you pay for.