35mm Negative Scanning Service

ProScan 35mm Slides and Negatives Scanning

ProScan Document Imaging is one of the principle slide and negative scanning UK based companies, offering prompt yet meticulously-reproduced digital images from your original film slides.

Digitising physical negatives and slides helps to protect film from damage and deterioration, which can be brought about as the result of:

High and low temperatures
Humidity
Sun damage
Colour shifting

All of which can harm physical film mediums regardless of how carefully they are stored.

We are able to digitise any number of slides, negatives or a combination of both, from 1 to many thousands - no job is too big or too small.

Please read more about our service below. If you’d like to speak with one of our team about slide scanning, please do call us on 023 8063 0050, fill in our contact form or jump straight to the quote form . If you are ready to send your precious memories to us for scanning then download our order dispatch form to get things started.

Choose a trusted negatives scanning service

ProScan Document Imaging aims to offer the best slide scanning service in the UK in terms of price, turnaround and quality. We’ve been preserving people’s memories since 2006 and we pride ourselves on our approachability, our professionalism, and our service levels.

We understand that internet users prefer to look at positive and negative scanning service reviews before choosing a company to handle their precious memories, which is why our scanning reviews are proudly displayed here.

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We scan and digitise most formats of slides and film

Sharing memories with the family in a digital era

Why scanning negatives to digital pictures is a good idea

Negatives are more fragile than physical prints, making them prone to damage. The older the negative, the more delicate it is likely to be, particularly in the case of black and white negatives.

Black and white negatives contain grains of silver halide, a sensitive chemical compound commonly used in film and photographic paper. These grains cause tiny scratches to be formed on the surface of the negative over time, which become extremely evident when the image is printed or enlarged.

Not only this, but particles of dust, hair and debris tend to look more obvious on black and white negatives, resulting in images that look blurred or untidy.

The more times the negatives are handled, for example when more prints are required, the more their quality degrades.

By scanning the negatives and reproducing digitally you not only get higher quality prints, you get the peace of mind that your negatives will never have to be handled again and that every subsequent print that is produced is as good a quality as the first.

When performed by a professional operator using advanced scanning technology, digital scans of negatives can look better than the original image ever did.

Advantages of scanning 120mm negatives:

Digital copies of your slides and negatives will not fade over time, cannot be damaged and are easy to reproduce again and again.
You can edit and retouch digital images, make them larger or smaller, print them or use them in digital artwork.
Once digitised, you have the capacity to arrange and archive your images, making them easy to find and add to custom collections. You can even tag them with names and keywords for easy retrieval for special occasions and projects.
Digital images are easily shared via WhatsApp, social media, DVDs and CDs. ProScan will upload your scans to the cloud or to a secure FTP area for easy access. We can also transfer them to memory sticks, DVDs, and CDs if you find these mediums easier to work with.

Things to consider before scanning in negatives and slides

Before contacting a negative scanning service UK based company like ProScan, there are a few things you should do to make the process quicker and to help ensure you can receive the highest-quality scans:

Check the physical condition of your negatives

Negatives that are damaged by dust, water, mildew or fingerprints will produce a lower-quality of image. Prior to scanning negatives and slides ProScan always check over each item you send us to see what needs to be done to achieve the highest quality output, but the more images there are the longer the process will be.

Scanning 110 negatives, for example, requires an eye for detail because of the small size of the film. Whilst your operator will do their best to notice any damage, you can help by first omitting any that are overly damaged from your order.

Decide what your requirements are

With the latest scanning technologies available, the digital copies of the slides and negatives we reproduce for you will be of the highest quality. However, more images will mean a higher budget, and more precise prints will take more time.

Some clients require swiftness when scanning 120 negatives. Others want 20 prints of the highest possible standard ready for display. With this brief ProScan is able to best fit your requirements to your budget and produce a high-quality set of digital images.

We can produce prints of any images we scan, typically to a standard 6 x 4 for photos. Talk to us about scanning 6x6 negatives and various sizes of film slides for professional-standard printing.

Do you want post-processing applied to your scans?

However technologically advanced, scans of images tend to come out looking like whatever it is they just scanned, only with more detail. Thus, negative scans, straight after the slide scanning process, look like the negative currently looks, except bigger.

Capture software settings often invert negative scans to create a ‘positive’ image - which would be closer, visually, to the finished photographic print. However, when film originals are processed by a photo lab they make adjustments to the images to finish them.

Exposure and contrast are adjusted, images are cropped, and techniques such as dodging and burning are used to create a polished final print.

When scanning negatives to digital, our operators will perform colour correction and other basic actions to make the film look as good as possible, but have the expertise required to do more, if appropriate.

What formats are compatible with our slide scanning equipment?

We offer slide scanning of major brands including Fujichrome and Kodachrome with ProScan Document Imaging’s 35mm slide scanning service.

We offer slide scanning to digital formats including JPEG and TIFF at resolutions from 1200dpi upwards for the highest quality digitisation of imagery.

Scanning slide film without the professional equipment required may not produce the results required. To find out more about our slide scanning service, please call us on 023 8063 0050.

35mm slide scanning is what most of our customers ask us to do, but if you have other formats our advanced equipment can process them too.

Our slide scanning is also compatible with the following sizes and types of film:

110 film 13mm x 17mm
120 film 60mm x 60mm
126 film 28mm x 28mm
127 film 40mm x 40mm
135 standard/35mm film 24mm x 36mm

Our slides and negative scanning service - how it works

1. Choose the negatives and/or slides you want to scan, check that they conform to the sizes and requirements listed above and contact us for a quote.

2. If you are happy to proceed based on the quote we’ve given you, clean your negatives and slides to remove any dust and debris and pack them into bundles of the same size. This will help to speed up the process of scanning your negatives and slides and helps us to turn your order around quicker.

3. You can post your slides and negatives to us. Please pack them carefully to avoid damage and send them via a Recorded Delivery or a guaranteed next-day Special Delivery service to make sure that they reach us safely. We recommend Hermes as they are often cheaper than the traditional postal service.

4. Can I personally deliver my slides and negatives to you? We are based in Southampton and are happy to have slides and negatives dropped off and picked up in person. Payment can also be made on-site.

5. Your order is overseen by an experienced operator who checks the quality of each slide and negative individually as they go through our scanners to ensure the best slide scanning quality settings are applied. If a picture does not pass our internal quality control check, we will rescan it.

6. We save your images into the order you provided them to us, making it easy for you to reorganise or collate them later. If you want the scans saved into folders, then please discuss this with us when making your order.

What happens during the slide scanning process

Slides are inspected individually for damage, and capably prepared for scanning by our professional operators
We use an industrial standard air compressor to remove surface dust from each slide.
Slides are carefully loaded onto our advanced slide scanners, ready to be scanned
Purpose-built scanning software removes any additional dust or debris before completing a full scan of each slide
Scanned images are checked manually for contrast and colour, before adjustments are made using first-class post-processing software
Operators will perform basic image editing on each image to clean them up and ensure they are up to our high specifications.

Slide scanning FAQ

What is the price of your slide/negative scanning service?

Our slide and negative scanning service prices are among the most competitive in the UK. If you need thousands of negatives scanning or if you have only a few slides you need converting to digital, we can offer you a fantastic service at a very reasonable cost.

For an indicative quote to see how much our slide scanning service will cost, please complete the form below and tell us how many slides and negatives you want us to scan. If you’re happy with the quote we provide, send a copy of it with your slides and negatives to our Southampton HQ.

Slide scanning service near me - is your negative scanning service UK-based?

ProScan Documents Imaging is based in Southampton, meaning that we are easily accessible by car and public transport from Basingstoke, Bournemouth, Eastleigh, Fareham, Havant, Portsmouth, Southampton, and Winchester.

For customers outside these areas, we suggest using tracked courier or Royal Mail services to ensure the safety of your negatives and slides in reaching us. We only use our most trusted courier services to return them to you.

When scanning 35mm negatives to digital, what format are they saved in?

All our scanned negatives are produced in a 48-bit colour JPEG format.

Is ProScan Document Imaging accredited?

Proscan Document Imaging has been certified to ISO9001:2015 standard for quality management systems relating to the provision of document scanning.

Will my digital scan be securely held?

Client confidentiality and data security is very important to us, so we store all scans securely and in accordance with data protection legislation. Every member of our staff is DBS checked and security vetted, and we are happy to sign non-disclosure agreements as required.

ProScan is registered with the Information Commissioner’s Office, and is fully compliant with all aspects of the General Data Protection Regulations – please click here to see our policy.

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