I just received my wedding photos back from the photographer. He shot on film gave us the negatives and what we thought would be high resolution scans of the negatives. The files are 1229x1818 pixels (~2.2 MP), not really what I would call hi-res.

Also, he printed out about 100 or so photos and they look pretty good (color and contrast wise), but the image files look pretty bad. I'm sure there was some color correction done during the printing of the photos, but nothing was done with the files.

My questions are:
1. How much is reasonable to pay to have the negatives rescanned at a higher resolution? I may actually have him do this, but not sure if he will ask for more money. I didn't spec the resolution.
2. Should I ask that the images be processed by the lab? I can do some minor enhancements, but don't have the knowledge or time to do the advanced editing that many of you do. We're talking about nearly 400 shots.
3. For reprints, should I use the negatives or files (if they are scanned at a higher resolution)?

 

You should only rescan the images you plan on printing large and just hold on to the slides in case you want to scan/print other ones down the road.

High-res scanning on a drum scanner like an Imacon usually runs about $70/hr if you can find a lab that will let you rent a workstation. Otherwise, you're probably looking at about $20/slide for someone to do it for you. You'll be able to print any size you want after one of those scans though.

 

We ended up taking the negatives to Costco to get them scanned. They charged $0.29 per frame and gave us 6.2 MP files on CD. They must use very low compression, because the files were ~3.5 MB jpegs. Total cost for 350+ frames was $120. Not too bad. This will do for most printing and definitely for generating CDs to send out.

for Costco

 

There have been a few e-mails back and forth with the photographer and he keeps stating that he sent me high quality images. Aside from him not knowing exactly what he sent me, he also has limited knowledge of digital image files and formats.

What he says he sent:
Compressed TIFF files stored as JPEG files
6 MB files
300 dpi (no mention of print size, so this is ambigous at best)
Says lab can convert the JPEGs back to TIFF
Says lab can scan negatives into 18 MB files (again, no mention of resolution or image dimensions)

What I received:
JPEG files - source unknown and not really relavent any more unless he has originals to send
400-700 KB files
image sizes of 1229 X 1818 - 300 dpi @ 4" x 6"

He is starting to shoot some weddings in digital, so I know I made the right decision when I asked him to shoot on film.