FAQ's

1. Separate Plastic and Paper mounted slides. [The bulk slide loader must be set to one or the other type and plastic and paper mounted slides cannot be intermixed in the loader.]
2. Please orient all of your slides the in same direction. If you can determine the emulsion side of your slides, please group your slides with the emulsion sides all facing the same direction. The emulsion side usually has a dull appearance compared to the opposite side. Also, most paper-mounted slides have “This side toward screen” printed on the emulsion side of the mount.
3. To perform dust and scratch removal on Kodachrome slides, a special set of scanner options must be used. Please separate Kodachrome slides from Ektachrome/Fujichrome/Agfachrome.
4. Separate color slides from black and white slides.
   Note: Dust and scratch removal does not work on black and white slides.
5. Pack slides in boxes, slide pages or wrap a 2-inch strip of paper around groups of slides and place a rubber-band around the them. To prevent any possible moisture damage during shipping, I suggest you place your slides in one or more zip-loc bags.
6. Pack all of your secured and bagged slides, and your order form.
7. We will contact you when your materials have arrived for scanning and when your scanning job is completed.
8. We will then email or call to let you know the job is completed.

Your slides are scanned to jpeg files and are burned onto CDs or DVDs if the file is large. Portrait format images are not rotated upright as to retain as much “picture” information as possible. JPEG images are even viewable on your TV with many recent DVD video players. You can choose either CDs or DVDs, but for large numbers of slides, we suggest choosing to have them delivered on DVDs which can store up to 8 times the amount of data as a CD. I use name brand, archival quality media and I test read each CD or DVD after creation, but you should be aware that the lifetime of even the best quality disc media is finite.

Though manufacturers quote data integrity lifetimes on the order of 50 years or more for CDs, for instance, recent published test data suggests that occasionally CDs and DVDs will fail and become unreadable much sooner, perhaps within even a few years of being burned. For this reason I make duplicate copies of all of my own images on CD or DVD and even keep the two copies in different locations (in case of fire, for instance). I suggest that you do the same, especially with your most important images, which is why I offer duplicate disc sets with your scanning order if you do not want to make your own copies from the discs I deliver to you.

vLS-5000 ED can scan at 16 bits or 8 bits. Scanning at a bit depth of 8 bits yields 256 shades per pixel for each component channel of the current color model (if the image is three color RGB, the result is 24-bit color, which can express roughly 16.7 million different color values). The maximum bit depth on the 5000 ED, 16 bits (65,536 shades per channel)

If you are looking for optimum quality, scan as 16 bit. [Large pictures] As for optimum file size, you want to go with 8 bit. We currently scan at the 8 bit setting. Consider the maximum size print you think you might want from any particular slide. For instance, if you only ever want to print small 5″ x 7″ prints, then 8 bit is fine and the current settings are 4464 x 3029. Even now that is overkill for the average photo prints of 4 x 6 to restore your history. Of course we will scan a “few” items at 16 bit at no extra cost if they are very special and you looking to enlarge the image.

Scratches, fingerprints and dust can ruin an otherwise fine film scan. You can never get rid of every speck of dust and defects like scratches that will show up as white or black dots and scars in a scanned image. Before the development of automatic dust and scratch removal in film scanners you had to spend enormous amounts of time removing image defects in Photoshop from even the most pristine of scans. We use Automatic dust and scratch removal can literally save you hours of cleanup work in an image editor, especially for 4000 dpi scans and less than sparkling-clean slides. Nikon’s ICE4 technology effectively removes most dust and scratches from your slides with minimal impact on the rest of the image.

Note: Automatic ICE4 dust and scratch removal does not work with black and white slides. ICE4 will work on Ektachrome/Fujichrome and Kodachrome films, though the best results are obtained with Ektachrome/Fujichrome.

All but the most high-end video cards and monitors display images with 8 bits per RGB color channel, or 16.7 million colors, representing all combinations of 256 shades of red, green and blue. Studies show that the human eye/brain cannot reliably distinguish among more than about 10 million colors, so 8 bits per channel image files seem more than sufficient to represent all the colors you can see in an image.

Each Film Scanning Package Inc Each Film Scanning Package Includes:

• Professional Quality Scan
• Up to 4000 DPI Optical Resolution
• Color Restoration
• Contrast Enhancement
• Scratch, Dust, and Fingerprint Removal
• 300-Year Gold Archival Media
• Custom Surface Disc Print