Hi Guys,
Apologies for jumping in, but I noted the link one of you kind people (Jonathan) shot to my lab
AtkinsTechnicolour, and just wanted to comment on the results you were wrestling with.
Processing E6 film is quite simple, but to do it well and most importantly consistently, is a nightmare, particularly with low volumes of film, I know how much we wrestle with it. But I don't believe this is your problem.
We do long-roll scans of film, that is when you have a film processed we can scan each frame just after processing (this minimises dust and handling etc), but tranny film, particularly images of contrasty subjects, is tough to get right when doing this one-off-each process. There is not the money in it to concentrate on each frame and do the best, and the long-roll equipment is a compromise of speed and quality.
I would guess that that scan is not a result of a drum scan from Vision, but from a full roll or long roll scan. If they pointed their big scanner at the frame and you were happy to pay $50 for them to scan, you'd be very happy. Perhaps they just did a bad job! In which case if it was me, I'd want to be told.
We have the same problem. Those long-roll scanners do not have a good d-max to record the "blacks" adequately. The result is a milky, mushy black field and blown out highlights.
While both Vision and us would love your scanning business, I'd recommend you get yourself a dedicated film scanner, like the cool scan, and take you time with those special frames. Frankly the cool scan and other dedicated ones like it are pretty good, but they take time to master to get the scans to look like they came from $100k scanners, but it can be done. You may also want to look into scanning at multiple densities and use photoshop's HDR feature to combine them to one scan.
As far as processing your own, don't complicate your scanning by introducing inconsistencies in your film. The secret to all of this stuff is reproducability, "can you go out and shoot that shot again but better?" And if you throw in the variable of processing your own film......you will be chasing your tail.
We'd love to scan your work, but it can be un-economical for you, so perhaps save your money for that shot of a new star that you want enlarged massively for the cover of New Scientist.