There could be a huge difference. You can do transfers with $100 worth of second hand equipment, or you do it at archival standards. This is particularly true of 8mm which is a “home movie” format. Many facilities that handle 8mm do so to home movie standards, not archival standards.
If the companies are local, visit the facilities and ask for a tour of the process. If they can’t do this, I wouldn’t trust them. It doesn’t really take any expertise to tell the difference between a high-quality lab and a low-budget facility.
The National Archive's lab of record is here in Washington, DC metro area. They have as much archival preservation experience as anyone in the country:
http://bonolabs.com/national-archives/
The other local film lab in the Washington, DC metro is Colorlab:
http://www.colorlab.com/film.html
Colorlab is a full service facility as opposed to Bono Labs which is more specialized. Both are excellent film labs with decades of experience and excellent reputations. You can trust either to be as good as anyone in the country.
Sorry I can’t help you with Denver. While I agree that it would be best to stay local, only a few good film labs have survived into the digital age. A lot of what exists now specializes in high volume transfers of “home movies” not professional quality film preservation.
Cheers,
tod
> On Apr 19, 2019, at 2:11 PM, Sarah Saxe <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> Hi All,
> I am researching companies to digitize 8mm and 16mm film in our collections. Does anyone:
>
> 1. Have a company they recommend
> 2. Have experience using Southtree, a company I found online?
>
> I compared prices from a local Denver company, The Archival Company, and Southtree. The pricing from the first two companies are much much higher than what Southtree offers and I'm wondering if I should be hesitant. Or, perhaps they have such a high volume of projects they are able to offer more competitive pricing?
> Thanks for any insight you might have,
> Sarah
>
> Sarah Saxe, Curator of Collections
> City of Greeley Museums
>
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