Discounted Microfilm Scanning, Microfiche Scanning, Aperture Card Scanning, and Imaging Services

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Your One-Stop Microfiche Scanning Services Solution

High Quality Microfiche Scanning Services

Generation Imaging is a microfiche scanning company located in South Florida. It has serviced hundreds of clients, including imaging resellers, financial institutions, schools, insurance companies, colleges, engineers, homeowners associations, government agencies, researchers, military veterans, libraries, and many others.

scanning microfiche

Does Your Microfiche Reader Need Repair?

As we march on into the 21st century, there are still remnants of an analog tech industry: you, your institution or your office may still be using microfiche on a daily basis, for an occasional request, or just as an archive. Part of the archaic method is to use a reader printer to read or print individual images.

That process can best be described as a band-aid and the general mentality is that it’s less expensive compared to digitizing the entire microfiche collection. However, a true cost benefit analysis must be considered before disregarding a microfiche conversion possibility.

Those microfiche readers were not built to last, and more and more users are reporting a lack of technical support, a need for spare parts, upgrades, or replacements. All of these searches may come up short in today’s economic times and advanced technological leaps.

What is Microfiche Scanning?

Microfiche scanning is the act of converting microfiche to digital images. Your entire fiche card or collection can be transferred to an output media such as CD, DVD, or external hard drive, or uploaded to a server, PCs, or internet. The benefits of converting an analogue media to digital media are numerous.

The resulting images can be in any image format; some common ones are TIFF, PDF, or JPEG. The frames of a microfiche may be outputted as individual files (called “single page”) or wrapped up into one file containing a fiche or name (called “multi-page”).

Microfiche Scanner Price vs Microfiche Scanning Price

Microfiche scanning is a specialized skill, and requires the correct equipment, experienced management, trained employees, a rigid set of procedures, the proper network configuration, parts and maintenance, insurance, office space, and many other factors. Microfiche scanning is a niche industry and although it is logical to presume that it would be cheaper to buy a microfiche scanner than to subcontract scanning services, that is actually not true in most cases.

A new high-quality, high-production microfiche scanner can run around $55,000 each depending on the make and model. Consider a mandatory maintenance plan and labor as well. A used microfiche scanner is slightly cheaper, of course, but understand that most are sold “as is” with no warranty or guarantees after a 30-day period (if that).

Generation Imaging offers very low microfiche scanning prices. Depending on how many microfiche cards in your collection it could a small flat rate fee for a small project or a tiny charge per image on large volume microfiche projects. Generation Imaging provides professional experience: microfiche scanning is both an art and science, and G.I. Partners has the high-end equipment, expert employees, and workflow procedure all ready right now.

The Benefits of Microfiche Scanning Conversion

Subcontracting the microfiche conversion to Generation Imaging is a relatively quick and painless process. Here are some benefits.

Microfiche to digital image saves space.
Microfiche scanning saves the time and labor of searching through file cabinets or using reader printers.
A microfiche conversion will save money for you in the long run.
Having a digital copy allows unlimited duplication, copying, emailing, uploading, and sharing.
With a microfiche’s images in your possession, you know have two copies: an analog and a digital; you can use the originals as an emergency backup if you wish.

The Different Types of Microfiche

The term microfiche can apply to various types of media. The basic characteristic that links microfiche is that they contain frames on a flat plastic sheet (as opposed to a spool of film, color slide, paper document, or cut-out cardboard aperture card). Here is a brief description of the different types of microfiche:

16mm jackets: These were originally contained on roll film strips and have been cut down and inserted into open jacket sleeves. May contain anywhere from 1 to 90 frames, although there are always exceptions to any rule regarding generalizing microfiche properties.

16mm duplicate jackets: These no longer contain the open sleeves; copies of jackets. May be black, blue, purple, or other colors depending on the duplication process.

35mm jackets: Usually very large frames (like blueprints or drawings), containing around 1-6 frames.

35mm duplicate jackets: A copy of a jacket with no open sleeves.

COM fiche: Computer generated microfiche, theoretically with perfectly aligned rows and columns. Usually packed with 208-270 images, unless some columns are not full.

Duplicated COM fiche: Same as COM fiche, but usually blue, purple, or another color. One issue that may arise is that the duplication method was wrong, so the COM fiche becomes skewed (crooked) or out of focus (rare).

Rewritable microfiche: Sometimes referred to as AB Dick or Microx, these are generally very light, and may look like duped jackets, but are evenly spaced, and contain “blank” frames.

Step and repeat microfiche: “Step-and-repeat” fiche were created with a special camera (also called 105mm film). They are more straight and even than jacket fiche, but have a varied image count, usually 60-300 images. They mostly contain manuals from Yahama, Suzuki, Ford, GM, Harley, Kawasaki, lab notebooks, books, etc.

Ultrafiche: These are like “super COM fiche” or “giant step-and-repeat” microfiche. There may be up to 500 very tiny frames on ultrafiche.

How To Start Your Microfiche Conversion

Please contact a representative from Generation Imaging today for a free, no-obligation microfiche scanning price quote.

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Microfiche+Microfilm Scanning Services: Happy New Year 2013

Happy 2013 from Generation Imaging. This South Florida microfilm scanning company continues to grow in machinery, staff, and projects. Damian Hospital and Dan Gandul are doing great and are still taking care of existing clients and new customers with the same zest and zeal.

Generation Imaging has experts in the microfilm scanning industry and provide digital images from analogue media, which allows faster retrieval and the ability for you to make unlimited backups on your network, computers, DVDs, CDs, external hard drives or other storage media.

microfilm scanning

New Economy, New Rules (Low Costs)

Generation Imaging offers low cost microfilm and microfiche scanning services because G.I. goes not use subcontractors or send your film overseas. G.I. will work closely with you to make sure your format, naming, scanning resolution, and other file requirements are met.

Don’t be shy; do not hesitate to contact Generation Imaging for any micrographics service inquiries, including color slide scanning, aperture card conversion, paper document digitization, photo scanning, indexing images, searchable OCR PDF/TEXT, and other image processing.

Generation Imaging has doubled its production and processing output, which means G.I. can continue to offer low prices and meet your deadline.

Welcome, Anthony DeCarvalho

[Update] Additionally, Generation Imaging welcomes aboard Anthony DeCarvalho in 2013.  Anthony DeCarvalho has experience dating back to the mid-1990s to this century. DeCarvalho has worked as a scanner operator, supervisor, and manager. His technical skill is superior, as his dedication to quality and production.

Anthony DeCarvalho now assumes a role he has been familiar with for years at Lorien Technologies: he is now managing 3rd shift for Generation Imaging. This makes sure that Generation Imaging will strive to complete large projects even more efficiently.

Expanding Year After Year

Generation Imaging has the fastest growing client list in the industry and has glowing testimonials from real and satisfied clients. There would be more testimonials, but the bulk of Generation Imaging’s customers are other scanning service bureaus who subcontract work or middle-men or middle-women who resell or subcontract microfilm and microfiche projects. In other words, many of Generation Imaging’s clients must maintain confidentiality and anonymity.

Give Trust and Get Trust

Generation Imaging’s founders believe in and practice trust. G.I. will not “go after” a project if you request for a quote. For example, if you are a reseller or another scanning service bureau and tell us that you are trying to get a project from a specific library, Generation Imaging will not attempt to bypass you and steal your lead.

If you don’t want to take our word for it, you can read the testimonials or check G.I.’s reputation online.  G.I. will gladly sign a confidentiality agreement (nondisclosure contract) if you or your corporation does not want to take our word. G.I. won’t take it personally- we work for you, not against you.

Generation Imaging hopes you have a healthy and prosperous new year.

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What Are Microfilm Scanning Services?

At the most basic level, microfilm scanning services refers to digitizing roll film. In other words, it is the transfer from analog media to digital format. To break it down even further, it is roll film to tiff, pdf, jpeg, or other image format. The two types of roll film are 16mm and 35mm, not to be confused with movie film.

So in addition to the actual roll film conversion, is another component of microfilm scanning services?

Quality control. Some companies don’t actually check their work, or simply do a quick spot check before sending the project out. What happens is that he burden would get put on you to perform your own in-depth quality check. If you don’t have time or labor to perform a check, there would be a great chance that the images are incorrect, which is a nightmare. Generation Imaging performs four phases of quality control, which are including in our standard microfilm scanning services.

  • Phase 1: Generation Imaging’s scanner operators actually check their work during scanning. They check their settings. As a failsafe, each project has a project manager and supervisor to verify that the microfilm machines and specifications are correct.
  • Phase 2: Another worker or workers will audit the scan. The scanner will create a ribbon of the entire roll, and the auditor will manually verify, modify, and- if necessary- adjust quality or rescan the roll.
  • Phase 3: This is an intense quality control process that meets industry standards. It is performed by a separate quality control team. A significant percentage of images is checked. 100% QC and/or manually adjusting or manually cropping or manually splitting images are add-on microfilm scanning services.
  • Phase 4: The CD, DVD, or hard drive is checked and image counts are matched.

As you can see there is more to microfilm scanning services than just hanging a roll on the machine.

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Florida Slide Scanning Services

Generation Imaging provides Florida slide scanning services to anyone who has a need to convert color or monochrome slides to digital images, such as JPG, PNG, PDF, or other file formats. We have the capabilities to convert a handful of slides or hundreds of thousands of slides.

florida slide scanning

The benefit of 35mm slide scanning allows you to store, copy, share, and print the images as much as you’d like. It is a great way to preserve your memories, family history, publications, or sporting events.

There are a lot of slide scanning price advertisements all over the internet. Many ads are awfully aggressive, but they have fine print. If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

Generation Imaging’s slide scanning pricing depends on the volume of color slides you have and if you need any indexing or data entry done.

All of our work is done in South Florida. Each image is quality checked and rotated to right read.

Types of slides include 35mm, 35mm half frame; Generation Imaging also digitizes 35mm photo negatives, film strips, and various types of photos.

Generation Imaging’s core business is microfilm scanning and microfiche scanning, but we also provide such imaging services like slide scanning, aperture card scanning, 16mm microfilming, 35mm microfilming, document scanning, OCR, and indexing.

Please contact Generation Imaging for your slide scanning price quote. Please let us know the volume and if you have any format requirements. In turn, we will let you know our price per slide and turnover time.

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Reselling Microfiche Scanning Services

Reselling microfiche scanning services is an excellent way for your company, organization, or you to have access to a stream of revenue without investing in equipment, labor, office space, training, or liabilities. For example, let us say you work for a litigation company and one of your clients- in addition to needing documents converted to PDF- also has a collection of microfiche containing payroll records. Let us also assume that the set of fiche contains 1,000 cards.

microfiche scanning

It doesn’t make sense to perform the microfiche scanning on your own for the following reasons:

  1. Cost. Why buy a new microfiche scanner for $65,000 to digitize something worth around $4,000?
  2. Inferior scanners. There are scanners that are cheap (like $10,000) but what type of quality would you expect from low level camera technology?
  3. Labor, training, workflow. Do you really want to incur money up front costs to  expand your company just to handle 1000 COM fiche?

Anyway, after you spend some time investigating all of these options and have meetings about the feasibility of your company doing the microfiche scanning, you will realize that it is more efficient to outsource the microfiche scanning.

Since Generation Imaging is a wholesale service bureau you will get a below market conversion price, which will give you room to add on to the price to your end client, i.e. reselling the microfiche scanning service. After all you are the one responsible for taking care of your end client, you are taking the risk, and you will be the one servicing the end client.

Generation Imaging can be your silent partner for reselling microfiche scanning services, or if you totally don’t want to get involved you could simply have us go direct and we’ll give you a commission- it’s your choice.

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