“I first sent some work to be drum scanned when I was getting ready to print my book, The Fireweed Turns. Another photographer had advised me about Professional Drum Scanning (PDS), and I am forever grateful for that information. I had done all my own scanning and converting up to that point, but when the drum scans came back it was like I was seeing my work properly for the first time.
Since then, I have been sending other projects to PDS, with the intention of eventually scanning a good selection of my whole archive. I get very excited when the initial files are ready, the anticipation of seeing the full beauty of the negative.
Most recently, a series I made in the desert in Oman has been given a new lease of life after being drum scanned. The negatives were quite badly processed back in Muscat, and I had struggled a lot with over-saturated skies, etc. The photographs now look as if I’m back in the desert! Tim and Charlotte are great people too, they’re fantastic to work with and everything is really easy to organise. And the cost is more than reasonable. I am always telling other photographers about PDS.” – Katharine MacDaid
Katharine had a few frames that weren’t inverting well using standard processes. This is why we changed our approach to hand invert all of our scans. It ensures we get good colour accuracy across the highlights and shadows of an image as well as the usual high resolution you would expect from a drum scanner. Here are a couple of samples to show how editable the images are and how detailed.
Fuji Pro160S – Full Frame
100% Crop
Challenging Contrast Fuji Pro160S Negative
Examples of opening up shadows and pulling back highlights