Photo develop + scan houses

After doing some digging, I found some cheap places that develop and scan photos.

Developing

From what I understand, the main source of variability between professional developers is not the quality of the developing (that's just basic process control) but their care in handling your negatives.

The cheapest seems to be York Photo. Their prices come out to 0.18 (24 exp) or 0.15 (36 exp) per photo including 4x6 prints and 1612x1024 downloadable jpeg's.

Snapfish also does photo developing. They're owned by HP now, but they used to be owned by the same company that owns York Photo, so it's likely they use the same photo processor (in Bangalore, I think). Their prices are 0.21 (24 exp) or 0.14 (36 exp) per photo including 4x6 prints and online photos, plus 0.06 per photo to download 1500x1000 jpeg's.

I'll try out both of them and see how the scans come out. It'll have to be on different rolls of film, but at least I can look for egregious differences in scan quality.

I also looked at Mpix (couldn't get a straightforward price, but at least 0.19 per photo) and the labs from Ken Rockwell's blog (much more expensive, and not local for me). Costco sounds good, but I don't have a card.

Locally, Keeble & Shuchat does same-day turnaround. Develop only is 0.21 (24 exp) or 0.14 (36 exp) per photo, but adding a 1536x1024 scan brings it up to 0.63 (24 exp) or 0.42 (36 exp) per photo. Prints are extra, and higher resolution (3000x2000) adds another 0.23 (24 exp) or 0.15 (36 exp) per photo.

For specialty work, they use Swan Photo Labs, who goes 0.56 (24 exp) or 0.38 (36 exp) per photo at 1536x1024, or 0.79 (24 exp) or 0.53 (36 exp) for 3088x2038. They do throw in free replacement film, though, for whatever that's worth. Oh, wait: I know how much that's worth: about $2/roll (0.06 per photo).

Scanning

I'm not satisfied with these 1.6 megapixel scan resolutions. It's a good preview, enough for a blog post, but not even for a desktop background. And for a 300 dpi print that's little over 3x5. Furthermore, digital photo habits have also left me reliant on judicious cropping, so the "good" portion has much smaller dimensions.

So a specialty scanning house may be called for. Since there's more technique involved, I'd willing to accept that you get what you pay for.

ScanCafe seems like the cheap option that at least makes a lot of noise about having high quality. They have some kind of sale right now (0.29 per scan, down from 0.35). Since I don't plan on cutting apart the negatives, this is worst-case 0.92 per photo (1 in 4 worth keeping, 80% minimum on "pay only for those you want to keep"). These are 3000 dpi scans (3900x2625); upgrading to 4000 dpi (5200x3500) adds 0.09 per scan.

Larsen Digital seems like a pretty reputable place. They charge 0.35 per scan (worst-case 1.40 per good photo) at 4000 dpi, but have a $40 minimum and at least $18 shipping on top of that.

Results forthcoming!

I've signed up with York Photo and Snapfish, so they should be sending me welcome packages with pre-paid mailers. I'm also following up with York on a pricing discrepancy (the prices I listed are the prices on their "help - pricing" page, which are different from those on the "print out a mailer" page). I'm also waiting on some film I ordered from Adorama (Fujicolor Superia 400, Fujicolor 100, and Kodak Ektar 100).

I'm really excited though! If the film arrives before this weekend, I can take pictures of pumpkins!