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EigerStudios Museum Quality Services
Drum Scanning We scan with an Aztek Premier Drum Scanner, which we believe is the finest scanner ever made - twice as sharp as its nearest competitor - and the only one in the Bay Area. This is a custom service. We take the extra care to make sure each scan gets every last bit of the information that is on your film . There is no generic application of curves, on the contrary, film characterizations (CMS) are customized for each piece of film we scan. This CMS file is loaded into the scanner and the scanner scans that way. Most scanners simply make a raw scan and apply curves after the fact. This destroys data, or "combs the histogram" in technical terms. Our scans deliver you a full, uncombed histogram every time. Film grain size varies, depending on chrome vs neg and exposure and processing. In order to deliver the finest detail, we carefully match the drum scanner's aperture (sample width) to the specific film grain. If you undershoot the grain size you get grain anti-aliasing, which will over-enhance your grain. If you overshoot it you get a blurry image. We zoom in until we can see the actual grain and then match the aperture to it. Our scanner has the capacity to scan at many different apertures, spaced usually 2-3 microns apart, so we can target your film grain exactly. With some exceptions, chromes and most b&w negs scan in the 8-13 micron range. On the other hand, color negatives (and very grainy b&w negs) scan in the 19-22 micron range. Some drum scanners are fixed at 11 microns and will not do well with color negatives. We have this range covered and our scans from these films will not be anti-aliased. Our Aztek Premier has a 3 micron engine and is capable of an optical resolution of close to its ppi of 8,000. Independent testing has confirmed this. This means when we give you 8,000 dpi, it is real data. If we were to give you 8,000 dpi when our optical resolution was only 4,000 that would be another way of interpolating, something we want to avoid at all costs. We have a different philosophy regarding file size than most scanning service bureaus. Rather than offer a series of prices for the amount of pixels, or megabytes, we give you everything that the size of your original film can deliver. This way we don't offer you a terrible scan for one price , a little better for a little more, etc. We give you the best the scanner can deliver - every time. Unless someone specifically asks for a smaller size, we don't deliver scans at less than what we would do for ourselves. What we find is that if they do, more often than not they want to print it larger later on. With our service they don't have to pay for a second scan. These are the sizes we normally generate.
We can also do a 6 Gig file from a 4x5 or a 24 Gig file from an 8x10. If you need something like this, give us a call to arrange it. Archiving For art collectors, dealers, museums, ethnographers, and photographers who have a collection of chromes and negatives they would like to protect and archive, we offer the ultimate in scanning to digital files. We can scan your film to large format (1-24 GB) files with our Aztek Premier Drum Scanner. For large projects you should call us for an estimate. Remember that a chrome starts to break down in about 7 years. We can also do a 6 Gig file from a 4x5 or a 24 Gig file from an 8x10. If you need something like this, give us a call to arrange it. Printing All prints are Museum Quality, using the finest media of 100% rag paperÊor cotton canvas, and inks are archival pigment, non-dye inks. Color is printed on our 54" Roland 12 color d'Vinci Print System. It has the widest gamut and the smoothest tonal rendition printing of any printer on the market today. Black and White is printed on our 44" Dedicated B&W Printer with 6 dilutions of Carbon Pigment Ink. We are experts in Black and White and custom-mix our own inksets. There is a lot of work involved to get that first great print. The relationship between printer and artist has to be one of trust, mutual respect and mutual interest in the other's success. The kind of work that we do involves going further than the other services, making as many additional prints as it takes to get the image to dance off the page. Additional Digital Services Additional Photoshop work beyond a certain time or for specific repairs and changes to an image, such as removing a background, image editing, layout, retouching, etc. is available. Fine Art Reproductions Our work is a high end museum quality process, customized to each individual artist. We use a hybrid method that pulls the best techniques of film and digital and merges them to create a product with the ultimate in quality. All work is done in conjunction with the artist so that the artist's vision becomes an integral part of the process andÊthe artist knows exactly what is possible with our technology. We do everything we can to match the colors (asÊclosely as technology allows) to the original artwork and to fully satisfy the artist's intent. This approach usually means that it takes many more prints on expensive paper before we are satisfied (and you are thrilled). Our setup process includes photographing the artwork with a 4x5 camera, and scanning the transparency or negative to a 1.7 Gigabyte DIgital file. For artists who already have their artwork photographed and have a 35 mm slide or 4x5 transparency, we'll initiate the process with the scan, however sometimes it takes more work to correct an imperfect transparency than to re-photograph the artwork. 35mm is not recommended if at all avoidable. Processing of the file includes selection of different areas of the print for color, saturation and luminance corrections and making as many prints as are necessary to get very close to the final goal. This process is time consuming and may take 1-2 full days. When we are ready to show you a first test print, it will be 10-12 inches wide, so that you can see all the colors easily and to get a clear sense of how the final image in its full size will look. Corrections are made and the artist is invited in for the final part of the process. For artists that are out of town, the print is sent to them for viewing at their location. **The Final Proof, which needs to be approved, signed and dated, is kept as a Studio Match Print (also called the BAT or bon a tirer). This Studio Match Print, (approval signed and dated) is kept on file at EigerStudios and remains the property of Eiger Studios. Image Archiving At the completion of the project, the artist may request all the files and they will be delivered on DVD. We only use MAM media, (which is gold-on-gold archivable media, see www.mam-a.com). Those that will continue to reorder will have their files kept on our multi-Terabyte RAID arrays and others may request that we store them for a reasonable fee. Workshops and Training We have an extensive background in teaching photography, both film and digital, large format cameras, scanning, and Photoshop work. We offer custom-tailored mentoring programs to fine artists and fine art photographers. We are available to consult and train on an individual basis, and we do workshops from time to time. Come experience excellence, available to the best of our abilities, here at EigerStudios. |
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