On Thu, 2 Aug 2018 12:00:23 +0100, RJH wrote:

Are these online/retail commercial scanners really that bad, then? You
can't even get a ballpark estimate of whether the shot is worth keeping?
I've got maybe 400 35mm negatives I was thinking of committing to an
online processor.

For anything more than a handfull of images. a thitd party service
will cost you ****loads and the "rough scans" will be mediocre.

Plus, you'll be presented with hundreds of dinky images which will
after a few minutes all look much of a muchness, making a sensible
decision of which ones to select for a second do extremely
inefficient. Basically, mind-fog.

As always, there is no "qucik and easy" fix that's worth the trouble.

The only way in that really works is doing it right, yourself, the
first time. That means running every single neg through the scanner
yourself and deciding at the pre-scan stage which ones to scan.

Only you can tell which images are ones that you want to keep.
Remember also that in the examination of each image, you may well see
shots -- or parts of shots -- that leap out at you that you missed
when thumbing through the prints. Nobody else can do it for you
because it's a value judgment.

If a decent number were worth keeping I'd buy a decent
scanner.

You need to have your own scanner for this kind of project, if only
because it will take so long when there's more than a handful of
images.

The scanner will retain its value, so once done, you may want to sell
on the scanner. But in this kind of archiving project, the cost of
the scanner should be the very least of your considerations.