Jim’s Slide Scanning Business Blog

Over the last 22 days, 21 orders have been received here.  I’m continually amazed at the growing demand for slides to digital conversion services.

A Testimonial:

One customer had the same 30 slides scanned at about 10 different local scan service providers, including mine.  He told me the quality of the scans I did was better, by far, than any of the others.  He told me this after dropping of 440 slides for 2710PPI.  That batch is just a small portion of the work he wants done.  He left a portable hard drive to put his scans on.  He wants both edits and no edits versions.

Of his 440 scans, there are 22 which I’m not billing him for.  Those at “no charge” are difficult scans from high contrast slides or slides that were out-of-focus.

I thought after the Christmas rush, I’d see a slowdown in orders coming in.  Not so.  My phone continues to ring off-the-hook with people calling about digitizing their slides.

For example: Simon, a physician in PA called about his archive of about 2000 slides, mostly X-Rays and CT scans. Ron, a photographer, called about his collection of about 1000-2000 slides.

Orders from repeat customers continue to make up a large portion of the work.  Some examples are Sam L., an adventurer/photographer/writer.  Sam dropped off his first batch here about a month ago.  Sam looks a bit like Sean Connery, beard included.  Sam travels a lot and is currently in Maine.  His second batch of slides was delivered last week.

Dudley, from western Massachusetts has been sending his slides, in batches, for about the last year and a half. Dudley displays his scans using a digital projector. He shoots mostly with Fuji Velvia because he loves saturated colors.  Dudley asks that I increase the brightness and saturation in his scans to account for the loss a digital projector brings.

John G. from Rhode Island has been sending his slide carousels, 1 or 2 trays at a time, over the last 2 years.

A pathologist in NY has sent several orders recently.  Most of her slides are made using a camera and a microscope to show microscopic cells etc.

After finally finishing a very large order least week, I’ve caught up with the backlog of scanning work which has been keeping me really busy.

In spite of catching up, I’m still not accepting orders for delivery before Christmas.  I don’t need the pressure and no order should be rushed!

I have a few orders in house which will keep me busy until after the holidays.

I’m considering raising my prices soon and may implement the change Jan.1, 2009.

Slide scan orders are booming.  Liz in NJ sent me ~3750 slides, that’s about 31 trays!  She’s not in a hurry, which is good. I don’t like pressure. We’re splitting the lot into three batches.

A couple of local customers dropped off slides this week.  Bill delivered about 144 Kodachromes, many were water damaged years ago.  Another customer from Cambridge MA dropped off 2 trays for conversion to digital.  He plans to present a slide show using a digital projector at a relative’s birthday party.

A few of the other orders this month were from a pathologist in Virginia, (slides to PPT)  a cosmetic surgeon in Massachusetts and an industrial safety instructor in Maryland. Today a shipment of slides arrived from a pathologist in California.

I’ve finally caught up with the backlog of orders created last month due to the shut down. July and August have traditionally been slightly slower than other months, but that seems to be changing.

Several of the recent large order have been from customers who want to save money by choosing the “no-edits” reduced pricing.

Jerry from PA is sending ~1300 slides in 11 Kodak carousel trays.

Scanning operations are back in full swing. As I expected, the July shut down created a backlog of orders. Local, no-ship customers continue to make up a significant portion of the work.

Currently there’s about a 10 day turn time, due to the back log.

Some of the in-house orders will soon be shipping to JeanMarie in Washington DC, Jay in Williamsburg VA, Nicole in Davis CA and Ethel in Warner Robins GA. John in Baltimore MD will be receiving his scans of 6 slide carousels, all converted to PowerPoint. Tim from Ipswich MA will be picking up his 511 scans this weekend.

As I did in 2007, I’ll be shutting down the slide scanning business for the month of July, in 2008.

Due to scheduled vacations and a much-needed break, I’ll ask that no orders be shipped after June 25th and no large orders, over 500 slides, after June 21st.

Incoming shipments can resume on July 31st.

During last year’s shut down, several customers called and told me they were willing to wait for operations to resume. I anticipate many will do the same this year. For those of you who cannot wait, feel free to call me ( Jim Harrington 781-244-5655 ) and ask for a referral.

For those shopping for the lowest price, please don’t bother to call for a referral. The scans service providers I refer callers to are not the lowest priced. A few of the low priced scan service providers send your slides out of the country to take advantage of low labor costs. I only make referrals to US businesses which I am familiar with, and have trust in.

I apologize for any inconvenience the shut down may cause. I hope to be able to serve your 35MM slide scanning needs after July 31st. If you plan to schedule an order delivery after the shut down, please call anytime to discuss the details. I’m not always available to take calls but if you leave a voice message, I’ll return your call. Let me know the best time to call you and the time zone you are in.

My slide scanning business is a home office based operation. Although I often receive large orders, the focus is low volume and high quality. Each and every scan is initially saved to tif format. The digital versions of your slides are then opened in Adobe PhotoShop and each photo is individually enhanced based on its specific characteristics.

Improvements are made, where needed, to improve the exposure, color and to enhance shadow detail. Where feasible, I remove red-eye and clone-out specks and spots which the Digital Ice Dust and Scratch removal left behind. I avoid using automated processes like ROC which automatically enhance scans. ROC can have undesirable results when applied to most slide scans. ( I occasionally use ROC on batches of slides which have a VERY strong color cast due to age. Sometimes very old Ektachrome’s, Anscochromes and Agfachromes have a strong red, blue or purple cast.)

After scanning and improvements are complete, I count up the unacceptable scans and subtract that amount from the invoice…blah, blah blah.

One of the many reasons people convert slides, prints and home movies to digital is preservation.  Simply digitizing your photos is not enough however.

When photos and movies are in digital form, duplicates of the digital files can easily be made. Making duplicate copies is wise, to ensure that the media will be readable, if one copy should fail.

More important than the type of media you use to store digital files is storing a second copy at a different address or in a safe deposit box.

Here are some steps I suggest, so that your files don’t get lost to theft or destroyed by a catastrophe at your home.  This applies to your digital camera photos as well as old photos or movies you may have converted to digital.

• Make multiple copies of your digital photos. Consider copying them to all of your computers.
• Make back-up DVD’s, two or more copies of each disk.
• Copy files to more than one portable hard drives and store one in a fireproof safe.
• MOST IMPORTANT! Store a set of your digital image files at a different address so that in the event of flood, fire or some other catastrophe, the off-site files will be safe. Maybe you have a second home / camp, even a detached garage?
• If you use one on-site and one off-site external drive to back up your data, swap them frequently.

Incoming orders to my business are fairly consistent, with growing sales each year. Any loss in orders which might be attributed to dropping prices elsewhere in the industry, are more than offset by the growing market and an increase in local, no-ship orders. Also, as my customer base grows, orders from repeat customers increase.

Doing this work part-time, from my home-office, my capacity is limited. Most of the time, orders comes in at a rate quite close to my ability to process them comfortably. It’s rare that I’m over-burdened with work. It’s also rare that I have a day with no orders to work on.

After shipping out an order to a repeat customer, a cosmetic surgeon in Massachusetts on Monday, I had a couple of enjoyable days, with no orders to work on, a smooth balance.

Today, 124 slides arrived from Richard in Los Osos, CA. His order consists entirely of Kodachrome film, shot in the mid 70’s, to be scanned at 4000 PPI.

I got an e-mail reply from a relatively new, Canada based, slide scanning service provider. I wrote to them last week suggesting we exchange links. Since I don’t serve the Canada market, I felt that exchanging links would help promote each others pages. They agreed the link exchange would be a good idea so I’ll soon be creating a page for 35MM slides & scanning related links at www.slidescanning123.com.

Yesterday, 498 scans shipped out to Sue in Greensboro, NC.

Today, 100 slides arrived from Betsy in Port Charlotte, FL.

Tomorrow, 409 scans will ship out to Gary in Santa Monica, CA.