Elephant Scans

Elephant scans provide a cost-effective solution for scanning a large number of films without compromising on quality.

Main features

  • all images in high-resolution and quality from the start
  • contact sheets for easy overview and assessment of lighting and exposure
  • RAW scans included for future-proof, archival backups
  • cost-effective through streamlined workflow

Size Comparison

A visual comparison showing the resolution of dokko's elephant scans to the commonly used Fuji Frontier scanner:
comparison scan sizes 135 format dokko Frontier Noritsu

Scan and Print Sizes

Elephant scan sizes table

Contact Sheets

In addition to the individual scans, you also get two digital contact sheets with an overview of all images on each film:

  • color-timed sheet: The exposure and color adjusted for each individual image
  • one-light sheet: With the exposure and color being the same on all images of the film (corresponding to an analog contact sheet)
Color-timed digital contact sheet with individually corrected exposures

One-light digital contact sheet with uniform exposure across all frames

Details

The conventional way of scanning an entire film is to first scan it using a low resolution scanner with draft quality, then re-scan the selected images at a higher resolution. In my view this workflow is outdated and has several disadvantages:

  • it's impossible to accurately evaluate focus and exposure from the low quality scans
  • color and contrast decisions are permanently applied in an irreversible destructive manner
  • there is no high-quality digital backup of the images if the film gets lost or damaged in the future
  • the film has to be handled twice, which costs time and adds the risk of blemishing the film
  • if additional images are needed in higher quality at a later date, they have to be scanned again

Elephant scans eliminate all these problems by scanning each and every frame at high quality from the start. The unedited, original RAW scans are always included along with the processed images, which makes them a perfect backup for future projects and safe archiving. This means that all images can directly be used for further production and do not have to be re-scanned again later on.

If you need higher resolution:

Single Images
mammoth / Leviathan

individual images for
extremely large prints

PDF document for download,
detailing the resolutions of all formats

download resolution list