I few days ago I had a roll of film developed and scanned at London drugs. When I looked at the digitals, I was really unimpressed. They were scanned at a high res, but only 75 DPI. Is that normal? I found that to be very low. The pictures are not clear or sharp at all imho.

Example (800KB jpeg):
http://tinyurl.com/32hht6

When minilabs first started selling photo cd's, the scans were REALLY good. But I think someone from the accounting dept. and marketing dept. got together over coffee and between the two of them they came to the conclusion that with those hi-res scans, consumers could easily go home and make extra prints on their home photo printers. Bad for business. So they dumbed down the output to 75dpi which is good enough for sending Amanda's birthday party pics to Aunt Ethel, but still forces you to come back to the lab with your negs if you want to make more prints.

Yeah, drugstore scans are usually pretty terrible. You might want to consider picking up a cheap scanner and just scanning the prints (or negatives) yourself.

I feel like such a consumer, but this post made me really nostalgic for the London Drugs on Yates. I haven't been there in 10 years.

Carry on.

Posted by mifft I few days ago I had a roll of film developed and scanned at London drugs. When I looked at the digitals, I was really unimpressed. They were scanned at a high res, but only 75 DPI. Is that normal? I found that to be very low. The pictures are not clear or sharp at all imho. Example (800KB jpeg): http://tinyurl.com/32hht6

Pardon my confusion, but if they're 75 dpi, how is that hi rez? Are they 30x45 inches at 75 dpi? If not, I'd venture to say that they're actually lo-rez.

Also, looking at your example, when black is showing up as mottled yellowish-green, I'd say they're doing a pretty shitty scan job. Do the prints look that bad?

Fist off, A correction. The images are at 72dpi, not like that's going to make a difference though.

I went to London drugs because there photo lab is supposed to have a very good reputation. I didn't get prints, just negs back (saved me about $4), so I can't compare them.

Pardon my confusion, but if they're 75 dpi, how is that hi rez? Are they 30x45 inches at 75 dpi? If not, I'd venture to say that they're actually lo-rez. Also, looking at your example, when black is showing up as mottled yellowish-green, I'd say they're doing a pretty shitty scan job. Do the prints look that bad?

I can understand why you are confused. On scanners Dots Per Inch, actually refers to Pixels Per Inch. PPI is the size of the pixels. In this case 1/72^nd of an inch, so yes, the images do measure 42" by 28".

On what part of the image is the black appearing to be yellowish-green?

they do nice high res scans at a good lab here, the same res as a 6mp digital, but they cost $10 a frame x.x

Posted by mifft On what part of the image is the black appearing to be yellowish-green?

All of the black looks to have a cast on both my home and work computers.

As for the ppi/size thing, okay, that makes sense now (that the scans are monster inches at low ppi, not that they give them to you that way). The scan looks like it's been 'up-rezzed' to me, although it's hard to tell for sure. I'd guess that their scanners are not really meant for high-quality digital scans though, just to give good enough results to get a decent 4x6 print.

Do you have a scsi port on your computer? Older Nikon neg scanners are getting pretty dirt cheap these days, and will do a much better job than a consumer lab. Food for thought.

How do you know your dyslexia is getting worse? You just now realize that you spelt "Film" as "Fiml" in the title.

I developed a different roll at walmart. For $4.90 I get a CD with quality scans, and my negs, in one hour. I'll be sticking with walmart from now on I guess.

Also, I won't be buying any more clearance priced LIFE brand film. Six rolls for $4.29 really was too good to be true.