Drum scanners, pseudo drum scanners, and linear-array film scanners haven't seen any meaningful development in decades and are no longer the gold standard for film scanning. The
DT Film Scanning Kit provides better image quality and significantly faster and more flexible workflow, and doesn't require wet-mounting (though it does support it if you have a special desire to spend all afternoon wet mounting).
It's our system, and I was the lead developer, so I'm
highly biased, but here are some institutions currently using it to scan their film archives:
- Disney
- Pixar
- National Geographic
- Google
- The Oscars
- The Gates Foundation
- The Getty
- The Smithsonian
- The Irving Penn Foundation
The Library of Congress selected our solution to scan the FSA Collection (the Migrant Mother among
many other iconic images during the Great Depression).
The Center for Creative Photography, which houses the life's work of Ansel Adams, Edward Weston, and many other iconic US photographers selected our solution to scan their collection.
We do have a small group of individual/private photographers who purchased one of these systems to scan their personal archives. You have to have a decent amount of scanning to do to justify the investment. Alternatively, we do offer limited scanning services in-house at our NYC and LA offices starting at volumes of 20-scan batches.