Oh how the times have changed! Today, artists come to us with all sorts of crazy material to scan; or they come with digital camera files to interpret. Our approach is simple: we take it all if we can. If we can’t, we hook up with other capable labs in the city and get-it-done.
Our main scanners are the Scanmate 11000s. These machines pull a resolution of 11,000 dots per inch with a minimum variable aperture opening of 3 microns. Our scans reproduce the potential of your film original at your computer’s file-size limit. We do not scan low resolution and we don’t charge you by the megabyte. That means we precisely scan the grain structure of a piece of film and represent that physicality as closely as possible in digital form. Generally we pull 600 megabytes to 1 gigabyte scans per piece of film. This variability is dependant on the size of the original and the optimal resolution required for each grain structure. We create beautifully smooth histograms directly in the scanner software. That said, we can do raw color neg drum scanning and interpret later if our customer prefers. All silver scanning is done at 16bit Grayscale and raw scanned. We also have smaller resolution scanners at 4000dpi and 5000dpi along with a large-format (11×14) Tango drum-scanner for both transparencies and reflective prints.
8″x10″ Film, 16bit Drum Scan from Scanmate 11000 with output sharpening applied in Photoshop.
Left image is full frame, post-inversion and visualization (JPG compression creates artifacts in the background); right image shows 100% (96/dpi view) Click images to zoom.
At Black Point Editions, we make a point to resolve your film grain. We want to show you our variable micron apertures at work. The images below represent scans from real-world photographs so they very in contrast. They are basically raw-scanned and inverted 8bit jpeg samples with no luminance, chromatic, or hardware noise reduction. They have contrast curves applied (especially in the high speed film) to at least show some of the grain structure. They are all very small crops from negative film.
Click the images below to see 100% pixel views.
4/5_Type55
4/5_PortraNC
6/7_FujiNPH
8/10_PortraNC UnderExposed
35mm_TekPan
35mm_PanC41
35mm_TMAX400
35mm_TMAX6400
For those who come bearing camera raw files, we have Lightroom and CaptureOne ready and waiting. That means your raw interpretation can stay raw and we will catch it on the upswing whenever it comes our way.
We have your film scanning and digital originals covered, be that 35mm TMX100 from a Leica, 8×10 Portra NC, or PhaseOne IQ180 files.