The mystery of the price of professional high end film digitization

There are companies charging 10 or 20 dollars for a single digitization of a film image. Are they getting any work? This work can be done for far less and still be quite profitable. What's going on here?

filmrescue said:

There are companies charging 10 or 20 dollars for a single digitization of a film image. Are they getting any work? This work can be done for far less and still be quite profitable. What's going on here?

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That's vague. Care to share examples? It's like saying some photographers charge $10 for a portrait but others $100, since a passport photo is more than a posed baby shot.

Digitizing old 35mm family photos at ScanCafe is going to cost less than a custom drum scan of your latest 120 film at 16bit at say James Burke or BayPhoto. Drum scans can actually cost $30 or more.

robgendreau said:

That's vague. Care to share examples? It's like saying some photographers charge $10 for a portrait but others $100, since a passport photo is more than a posed baby shot.

Digitizing old 35mm family photos at ScanCafe is going to cost less than a custom drum scan of your latest 120 film at 16bit at say James Burke or BayPhoto. Drum scans can actually cost $30 or more.

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I was vague because i didn't want this to be flagged as an advert for our company, but I'll throw caution to the wind.

I'm not talking about companies like Scan Cafe and Dig my Pics. Those are the companies we have to have our own prices in line with or we won't get any work. I'm talking about companies using drum scanners or even higher priced, a Phase One Cultural Heritage system. Here we use a Creo iQsmart 3 and a Phase One cultural heritage system but go above 3 dollars on a medium format scan, the volume of work plummets. The Phase One system we can get away with charging a bit more but it doesn't do as good a job as the Creo on color film whether that be transparency or negative.
I think it's the difference between professional and consumer markets but how to break the ceiling of the professional market has been a mystery for about a decade now since we upgraded our digitization facility.

filmrescue said:

robgendreau said:

That's vague. Care to share examples? It's like saying some photographers charge $10 for a portrait but others $100, since a passport photo is more than a posed baby shot.

Digitizing old 35mm family photos at ScanCafe is going to cost less than a custom drum scan of your latest 120 film at 16bit at say James Burke or BayPhoto. Drum scans can actually cost $30 or more.

Click to expand...

I was vague because i didn't want this to be flagged as an advert for our company, but I'll throw caution to the wind.

I'm not talking about companies like Scan Cafe and Dig my Pics. Those are the companies we have to have our own prices in line with or we won't get any work. I'm talking about companies using drum scanners or even higher priced, a Phase One Cultural Heritage system. Here we use a Creo iQsmart 3 and a Phase One cultural heritage system but go above 3 dollars on a medium format scan, the volume of work plummets. The Phase One system we can get away with charging a bit more but it doesn't do as good a job as the Creo on color film whether that be transparency or negative.
I think it's the difference between professional and consumer markets but how to break the ceiling of the professional market has been a mystery for about a decade now since we upgraded our digitization facility.

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Well, I for one would love to have my MF negatives drum scanned for $3. If that's availabe, please PM me with details.

Please correct me if I'm wrong, but my experience, at least, with drum scanning is that it depends a lot on the care of the operator--how willing is s/he to remove dust and other spots, how perfectly cropped to show film boards, etc. There's labor involved, and I guess that is factored in.

filmrescue said:

There are companies charging 10 or 20 dollars for a single digitization of a film image. Are they getting any work? This work can be done for far less and still be quite profitable. What's going on here?

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Film Labs like MeinFilmLab.de using the SP-3000 or SP-500 Fujifilm Frontier, and their matching Noritsu equivalent, usually the LS-600, HS-1800 or LS-1100. Those are professional scanners, which need a) a service each xx hours, and trained ppl to use them, it's not a cheapskate home scanner device. Each frame has to be carefully scanned and set up by the tech guy, thus this takes some knowledge, and especially experience. Whileas i do find the prices high in 2023, i must admit that lab scans are usually much better, than what you do with your tool at home. Albeit, an (nowadays) very costly Coolscan 9000 ED or V, etc...would deliver extraordinary results, still.

Usually, the lab guy does (at least) these kind of things:

Manual image processing by a photo specialist

manual setting of the white point
manual setting of the black point
manual setting of contrast
manual setting of brightness
manual white balance
manual color correction
manual image restoration
manual scratch correction check

Who charges that much money, like you mentioned? 10 or 20 USD for a single (!) image would being insane...or did you meant a filmstrip, which is usually 6 negatives in a row? Price would be also way over the top hereby.

--
"The Best Camera is the One That's with You" ~ Chase Jarvis

filmrescue said:

robgendreau said:

That's vague. Care to share examples? It's like saying some photographers charge $10 for a portrait but others $100, since a passport photo is more than a posed baby shot.

Digitizing old 35mm family photos at ScanCafe is going to cost less than a custom drum scan of your latest 120 film at 16bit at say James Burke or BayPhoto. Drum scans can actually cost $30 or more.

Click to expand...

I was vague because i didn't want this to be flagged as an advert for our company, but I'll throw caution to the wind.

I'm not talking about companies like Scan Cafe and Dig my Pics. Those are the companies we have to have our own prices in line with or we won't get any work. I'm talking about companies using drum scanners or even higher priced, a Phase One Cultural Heritage system. Here we use a Creo iQsmart 3 and a Phase One cultural heritage system but go above 3 dollars on a medium format scan, the volume of work plummets. The Phase One system we can get away with charging a bit more but it doesn't do as good a job as the Creo on color film whether that be transparency or negative.
I think it's the difference between professional and consumer markets but how to break the ceiling of the professional market has been a mystery for about a decade now since we upgraded our digitization facility.

Click to expand...

The most I’ve paid for digitization of a single 120 negative was £5 (on a Flextight X5) but that was almost entirely because it could be done locally (because of sentimental value of the negatives I didn’t want to post them) and at the time I had no way of scanning myself.

Tbh the only films I’d really consider send out are very small negatives where I don’t have the facilities to do a high resolution scan, so disc film, Minox, maybe 110. But the costs for me to do that (postage etc) would be significant, so I’d only really do that if I had quite a number of photos (so per image cost would be important).

It all really depends the quality level you're expecting from your scans. I charge anywhere from $75 to $250 for the highest quality drum scans and that are retouched for dust, color corrected and often times I'll deliver a more or less straight scan and then a version of the image that I might do if it had been my own. People are usually blown away by the variation I send, not realizing such an improvement was possible.

I bought my first drum scanner in '98 used for $12,500 and my second in 2001 for about $15,000. That would have been a $40K scanner new. Today, if you need service, it's a minimum fee of a couple grand just to look at the scanner. Plus I have a quarter century doing quality drum scans and even longer working in Photoshop. What you get from me for one or two hundred dollars is a bargain in what you're getting for the money. The scanner operator makes all the difference in the world.

You can get cheap scan but they won't be good scans, not by my standards, but they might be fine for what you need them for. Only you can decide that.

Out of interest, what would you charge for a straight scan with no retouching ? Is that the $75 price ?

Overrank said:

Out of interest, what would you charge for a straight scan with no retouching ? Is that the $75 price ?

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Actually I would never deliver something straight out of the scanner. No matter how careful you are there are things that need to be fixed, from scratches in the film to crimp marks from Refrema processing on sheet film, to embedded dirt in the emulsion or a bubble or two from the mounting fluid. I don't want anyone getting my scans to have to find junk in the scans. That price is more if you're getting multiple scans.

One of the thing that always bothered me were scanning places that charged by the megabyte, which, of course is double for 16 bit per channel and after I had been scanning for a few months, I really understood what a crock that policy was. First of all, the scanning time is exactly the same for 8 bit as it is for 16 bit. The scanner always scans in 16 bit per channel and if you ask for an 8 bit scan, the software just converts it on saving.

The other thing that most people don't know about drum scanners is how they operate in terms of resolution. The resolution is governed by an aperture in front of the lens combined with how fast the drum spins in front of that lens. The scanner I use has the smallest aperture of 3.175 microns (times 8000 = 1 inch) and then the next aperture is 6.3 microns or 4000 ppi, or more appropriately samples per inch, so the two highest hardware resolutions are 8000 and 4000. There's nothing in between. The next step down is 2667 ppi and then 2000, 1600, 1100, 1000, 800 and on down. Those lower hardware resolutions are really legacy from prepress scanning when it was much faster to get it right in the scanner and Photoshop version 1 and 2 were very slow. So for fine art scans, we really only need to be concerned with the top three resolutions and for most scans 4000 is more than adequate.

There are some limitations with workarounds when necessary. The scanning software only runs on Mac OS 9.2.2, y'know from around 1999 or so, so if you need an 8000 ppi scan from a 6x7 cm piece of film and you want 16 bits, it has to be done in two scans due to the 2GB file size limit in the legacy OS.

I don't actively pursue scanning jobs but will do them when they come my way. I bought the first scanner to scan my own film and it paid for itself in four months doing scans for a commercial client after they learned I had it. (Same thing with my first large format Epson) I'm still scanning deserving frames from fifty years of shooting and for as long as the scanner keeps working and parts and service are available.

I don't publish a scanning price list but prefer to have a conversation about exactly what's needed and how best to deliver that. Plus, my own retouching and color correcting skills are well beyond any commercial scanning lab and have often (and will still do) done test scans for free especially if someone has never seen what a good drum scan can look like.

Getting back to the hardware. Something that is not talked about much is scanner hardware resolution. Well, it IS talked about but there's a lot of misinformation there. I'm going to use one brand as an example. You'll often seen drum scans referred to as "Tango" scans, which really refers to the Linotype Hell Tango vertical drum scanner. Tango's, and other Hell models as well, have a minimum aperture of 10 microns. That means the hardware resolution is limited to a hard 2540. Ten microns times 2540 = 1 inch. They claim over 11000 dpi but it's a sleight of hand. It can only be 2540 on one axis but they slow the drum and and lead screw that moves the drum or the lens down to make smaller increments, so you get higher res in the opposing axis. The problem you see on those scans, especially high res from 35mm film with diagonal lines is that you get visible stair-stepping in those scans. Of course Tango operators do not want you to know about this. You could see this in plain view on all of the largest prints that were on display at Mountain Light in Bishop before they closed after Galen died.

It's late. Enough about scanning for the night.

Thanks so much for all that helpful information.

I've only used a drum scanning service once. I thought it was good, not great (not the process, but the company that did them). But it was a liberating experience for me. I had been obsessed with trying to do my own camera scanning that would approximate drum scanning. But when I compared my own scans with the drum scans of the same negatives I saw there was a significant difference at the micro level. This freed me up to actually swap out my scanning gear for another camera/lens kit that was a lot more convenient if rendering a bit fewer mps. I accept that there's a standard I cannot reach at home.

Bags27 said:

Thanks so much for all that helpful information.

I've only used a drum scanning service once. I thought it was good, not great (not the process, but the company that did them). But it was a liberating experience for me. I had been obsessed with trying to do my own camera scanning that would approximate drum scanning. But when I compared my own scans with the drum scans of the same negatives I saw there was a significant difference at the micro level. This freed me up to actually swap out my scanning gear for another camera/lens kit that was a lot more convenient if rendering a bit fewer mps. I accept that there's a standard I cannot reach at home.

Click to expand...

I think you CAN get very close to the best drum scan quality from a camera/lens "scanning" setup, but it's not going to be inexpensive. I've been spending time testing with great results using a Fuji GFX100s with a Rodenstock 105mm 5.6 Float macro lens on a focusing bellows system which I use for ultra focus stacked macro images as well, but you're looking at $6K for the camera body, $5K for the lens, $3-4K for a bellows system and then I modified my old Beseler 4x5 enlarger into a copy stand with a Just/Normlicht CRI 99 (measured) lightbox underneath it all and then a lot of patience in testing it. All looking toward the day when the drum scanner dies and cannot be repaired anymore due to lack of service, parts or both. So lets round that all to about $15-17K or possibly a little more because I haven't included sales tax in any of that. It can be done but it takes a commitment. But that's a LOT less than a Phase turnkey system from Capture Integration for $50K or whatever it is they charge. And it's still at least as complicated as fluid mounting film to an acrylic drum of the Howtek.

I realize this seems like a lot of money to spend but look at what we spend on our other hobbies like high end bicycles or motorcycles, sports cars, vintage acoustic guitars, building a home recording studio. Oh wait, those are just MY hobbies except for the motorcycles. The point is to spend the money on things that make you happy or that solve problems in your life that will lead to making your happier. Virtually all of the money I've spent on technology in the last quarter century has ended up paying off many times over even when I was personally skeptical at the time. The drum scanners paid off in a matter of months. The large format printers in the same with the second big Epson taking only two weeks to pay for itself and then some. The recording equipment hasn't paid for itself yet, but it has allowed us to do over fifty remote sessions over the last three years recording my long time musician gf for all sorts of movies, tv shows, video games, bands and more that kept her from having to go into commercial studios during the bulk of the pandemic, plus it's just more convenient to do it on our terms. And then I get to record myself as a bonus. It's all sort of the same process though and working in Logic Pro is very similar conceptually to working in Photoshop. Plus it's durned fun. Gotta watch what words you use here in this forum, Jed.

Sasquatchian said:

Bags27 said:

Thanks so much for all that helpful information.

I've only used a drum scanning service once. I thought it was good, not great (not the process, but the company that did them). But it was a liberating experience for me. I had been obsessed with trying to do my own camera scanning that would approximate drum scanning. But when I compared my own scans with the drum scans of the same negatives I saw there was a significant difference at the micro level. This freed me up to actually swap out my scanning gear for another camera/lens kit that was a lot more convenient if rendering a bit fewer mps. I accept that there's a standard I cannot reach at home.

Click to expand...

I think you CAN get very close to the best drum scan quality from a camera/lens "scanning" setup, but it's not going to be inexpensive. I've been spending time testing with great results using a Fuji GFX100s with a Rodenstock 105mm 5.6 Float macro lens on a focusing bellows system which I use for ultra focus stacked macro images as well, but you're looking at $6K for the camera body, $5K for the lens, $3-4K for a bellows system and then I modified my old Beseler 4x5 enlarger into a copy stand with a Just/Normlicht CRI 99 (measured) lightbox underneath it all and then a lot of patience in testing it. All looking toward the day when the drum scanner dies and cannot be repaired anymore due to lack of service, parts or both. So lets round that all to about $15-17K or possibly a little more because I haven't included sales tax in any of that. It can be done but it takes a commitment. But that's a LOT less than a Phase turnkey system from Capture Integration for $50K or whatever it is they charge. And it's still at least as complicated as fluid mounting film to an acrylic drum of the Howtek.

I realize this seems like a lot of money to spend but look at what we spend on our other hobbies like high end bicycles or motorcycles, sports cars, vintage acoustic guitars, building a home recording studio. Oh wait, those are just MY hobbies except for the motorcycles. The point is to spend the money on things that make you happy or that solve problems in your life that will lead to making your happier. Virtually all of the money I've spent on technology in the last quarter century has ended up paying off many times over even when I was personally skeptical at the time. The drum scanners paid off in a matter of months. The large format printers in the same with the second big Epson taking only two weeks to pay for itself and then some. The recording equipment hasn't paid for itself yet, but it has allowed us to do over fifty remote sessions over the last three years recording my long time musician gf for all sorts of movies, tv shows, video games, bands and more that kept her from having to go into commercial studios during the bulk of the pandemic, plus it's just more convenient to do it on our terms. And then I get to record myself as a bonus. It's all sort of the same process though and working in Logic Pro is very similar conceptually to working in Photoshop. Plus it's durned fun. Gotta watch what words you use here in this forum, Jed.

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Thanks so much for this. I can well imagine that that system brings you very close. I had a GFX 50r with a Mamiya 120 f/4 macro and a massive Beseler (which I still have). I swapped the camera/lens for a Panasonic S1R and Sigma 70 macro. The autofocus from the Sigma was just more accurate than the manual focus Mamiya, or at least it took a lot longer to nail the manual focus, since I'm scanning both 35 and 120 ,and the lens moves.

I had thought about the GFX 100s. But I can see where focusing bellows would make a big difference.

In any case, that's more than I need. I'd rather pay for the occasional drum scan.

OTOH, I'm right there with you with the custom bikes...and wine cellar...etc.

Bags27 said:

Sasquatchian said:

Bags27 said:

Thanks so much for all that helpful information.

I've only used a drum scanning service once. I thought it was good, not great (not the process, but the company that did them). But it was a liberating experience for me. I had been obsessed with trying to do my own camera scanning that would approximate drum scanning. But when I compared my own scans with the drum scans of the same negatives I saw there was a significant difference at the micro level. This freed me up to actually swap out my scanning gear for another camera/lens kit that was a lot more convenient if rendering a bit fewer mps. I accept that there's a standard I cannot reach at home.

Click to expand...

I think you CAN get very close to the best drum scan quality from a camera/lens "scanning" setup, but it's not going to be inexpensive. I've been spending time testing with great results using a Fuji GFX100s with a Rodenstock 105mm 5.6 Float macro lens on a focusing bellows system which I use for ultra focus stacked macro images as well, but you're looking at $6K for the camera body, $5K for the lens, $3-4K for a bellows system and then I modified my old Beseler 4x5 enlarger into a copy stand with a Just/Normlicht CRI 99 (measured) lightbox underneath it all and then a lot of patience in testing it. All looking toward the day when the drum scanner dies and cannot be repaired anymore due to lack of service, parts or both. So lets round that all to about $15-17K or possibly a little more because I haven't included sales tax in any of that. It can be done but it takes a commitment. But that's a LOT less than a Phase turnkey system from Capture Integration for $50K or whatever it is they charge. And it's still at least as complicated as fluid mounting film to an acrylic drum of the Howtek.

I realize this seems like a lot of money to spend but look at what we spend on our other hobbies like high end bicycles or motorcycles, sports cars, vintage acoustic guitars, building a home recording studio. Oh wait, those are just MY hobbies except for the motorcycles. The point is to spend the money on things that make you happy or that solve problems in your life that will lead to making your happier. Virtually all of the money I've spent on technology in the last quarter century has ended up paying off many times over even when I was personally skeptical at the time. The drum scanners paid off in a matter of months. The large format printers in the same with the second big Epson taking only two weeks to pay for itself and then some. The recording equipment hasn't paid for itself yet, but it has allowed us to do over fifty remote sessions over the last three years recording my long time musician gf for all sorts of movies, tv shows, video games, bands and more that kept her from having to go into commercial studios during the bulk of the pandemic, plus it's just more convenient to do it on our terms. And then I get to record myself as a bonus. It's all sort of the same process though and working in Logic Pro is very similar conceptually to working in Photoshop. Plus it's durned fun. Gotta watch what words you use here in this forum, Jed.

Click to expand...

Thanks so much for this. I can well imagine that that system brings you very close. I had a GFX 50r with a Mamiya 120 f/4 macro and a massive Beseler (which I still have). I swapped the camera/lens for a Panasonic S1R and Sigma 70 macro. The autofocus from the Sigma was just more accurate than the manual focus Mamiya, or at least it took a lot longer to nail the manual focus, since I'm scanning both 35 and 120 ,and the lens moves.

I had thought about the GFX 100s. But I can see where focusing bellows would make a big difference.

In any case, that's more than I need. I'd rather pay for the occasional drum scan.

OTOH, I'm right there with you with the custom bikes...and wine cellar...etc.

Click to expand...

Hey, that Sigma 70mm works quite well on the GFX but I like the Contax 645 120mm f/4 macro better with the longer working distance plus the Focus By Wire manual focus on the Sigma is just weird and completely non-linear. The Zeiss Milvus 100mm f/2 Makro is unbelievably great on the Fuji but is limited to half life sized. The Canon 135mm t/s-e is even better than the Milvus but slower at f/4.

The best thing about building the home recording setup, which is inside the photo studio, aside from a couple of killer Lauten Audio tube mics is the calibrated Genelec monitoring system. Those Finns know how to make some great speakers, and it's just as important to have calibrated audio when recording as it is to have a calibrated monitor for Photoshop. All that plus a great audio interface from Universal Audio has allowed us to make recordings that rival anything we've heard at any of the major studios here in L.A. That's a great feeling.

I scan film here in Latvia, Europe - using Heidelberg Tango drum scanner.

Yes, prices are what they are - they depend on the time spent per scan. A good 6x17 scan takes 45-50 mins to do the scan alone + add mounting, dismounting, preparing the scan. Also dusting takes time - so I'd say you can scan 1-2 films per day.

no , that's not very effective, it is a time consuming process so 20 bucks a frame is the lowest I would go for a 35mm scan. and yes, there is a minimum amount to be spent to turn on the machine.

I mean - the process is not for everyone - if you go for an "iPhone digitiser" - that's fine by me ,if you go for camera digitising - still fine by me - but if you care about ultimate quality, the drum scan is the best, and yes, it's a time consuming process so it costs what it costs.

filmrescue said:

There are companies charging 10 or 20 dollars for a single digitization of a film image. Are they getting any work? This work can be done for far less and still be quite profitable. What's going on here?

Click to expand...

Personally, i'd scan (soon) with my bought Reflecta ProScan 7200, which i got as new for a bargain price. From the reviews, it was good into general back then.

Reflecta ProScan 7200 review

Resume, conclusion

[...]

The included scan software CyberView does not make use of the full potential of capacity of the scanner. Those who want to obtain the best possible results with ProScan 7200 will have to make use of the scan software SilverFast Ai. With SilverFast Ai, ProScan 7200 provides very good pictures, and additionally one is also rewarded with a speed advantage.

Reflecta Proscan 7200 beats its straight competitor Plustek OpticFilm 8200i specially concerning the speed: it is many times faster and despite of a lower nominal resolution it generates some scans with the same effective resolution of 3250 dpi. As the achieved effective resolution is within the margin of the nominal resolution, one saves the time consuming compression of the scan files in the image processing program after the scanning.

Good light.

Janis Ratnieks said:

I scan film here in Latvia, Europe - using Heidelberg Tango drum scanner.

Yes, prices are what they are - they depend on the time spent per scan. A good 6x17 scan takes 45-50 mins to do the scan alone + add mounting, dismounting, preparing the scan. Also dusting takes time - so I'd say you can scan 1-2 films per day.

no , that's not very effective, it is a time consuming process so 20 bucks a frame is the lowest I would go for a 35mm scan. and yes, there is a minimum amount to be spent to turn on the machine.

I mean - the process is not for everyone - if you go for an "iPhone digitiser" - that's fine by me ,if you go for camera digitising - still fine by me - but if you care about ultimate quality, the drum scan is the best, and yes, it's a time consuming process so it costs what it costs.

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If I could only get one or two scans per day out of my drum scanner, I'd be reluctant to turn it on too. That seems impossibly slow for what is one of the faster drum scanners out there. Plus you've got a decent sized drum (11x14 inches approx.) to load up with film. You should be able to get at least half a dozen 617's on their if not more and be working on the first one as the others are being scanned. Even on my Howtek with its smaller drum and slower scanning speeds than the Tango, it would be no problem to crank out a dozen of those at 4000 ppi and spot them in a day. Plus, scanning 617 is basically like scanning two 6x8 cm pieces of film at the same time so you should be charging accordingly.

Sasquatchian said:

It all really depends the quality level you're expecting from your scans. I charge anywhere from $75 to $250 for the highest quality drum scans and that are retouched for dust, color corrected and often times I'll deliver a more or less straight scan and then a version of the image that I might do if it had been my own. People are usually blown away by the variation I send, not realizing such an improvement was possible.

I bought my first drum scanner in '98 used for $12,500 and my second in 2001 for about $15,000. That would have been a $40K scanner new. Today, if you need service, it's a minimum fee of a couple grand just to look at the scanner. Plus I have a quarter century doing quality drum scans and even longer working in Photoshop. What you get from me for one or two hundred dollars is a bargain in what you're getting for the money. The scanner operator makes all the difference in the world.

You can get cheap scan but they won't be good scans, not by my standards, but they might be fine for what you need them for. Only you can decide that.

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Yeah...I would love to be at this price point or even at half of it. Maybe it just that we need to start charging like this. Our scans and editing are very good. Using a Creo iQsmart 3 and a Phase One Cultural Heritage system. Creo does color better but it doesn't have the same respect as the P1CH.

Our experience is that anything with a bayer pattern sensor won't do color optimally...especially if it needs to be inverted. Even the Capture 1 software for the Phase One Cultural Heritage doesn't do inversions as well as the Creo albeit you can fairly easily edit them to look right. We're hoping to try a Megavision monochrome system (three exposures with color filters) to see if we can fix this issue. While neg lab pro does work but it's not as good as inversions on a proper scanner.

How about RAW files? In Sweden were I live we have very few alternatives. Crimson.se has the alternative RAW-scanning with 12.50SEK (around 1.25USD) for RAW up to 50MB. If they are DNG or could be converted to DNG is a must....To me it looks like some kind of auto RAW.

High end scanning is on another level: 60MB at 380SEK or 120MB at 535SEK

Born1948 said:

How about RAW files? In Sweden were I live we have very few alternatives. Crimson.se has the alternative RAW-scanning with 12.50SEK (around 1.25USD) for RAW up to 50MB. If they are DNG or could be converted to DNG is a must....To me it looks like some kind of auto RAW.

High end scanning is on another level: 60MB at 380SEK or 120MB at 535SEK

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Sounds like to me they're just shooting the film with a DSLR camera. Seems way over priced for this and if they're just giving you the raw files from the camera with no corrections, they're leaving you with a big headache if it's from color material...especially if the film being digitized is color negative. We can create RAW files from a 36 exposure film using a Nikon z7 in about 2 minutes....45 USD for 2minutes of work...overpriced and and a headache of an edit if from color material.