At 249 Lutwyche Rd, Windsor QLD 4030, RetroMedia's own staff scan your photo albums and loose prints in person, using Capture Australia's scanning technology. There is no mail-in option and no price published upfront: you get an estimated photo count and an indicative quote at drop-off, and pay on the exact count once scanning is finished. Most collections are ready in two to three weeks.
RetroMedia is on Lutwyche Road, about four kilometres north of the Brisbane CBD, easy to reach from Lutwyche, Wilston, Newmarket, Kedron, Grange, Fortitude Valley, New Farm, Newstead and Kelvin Grove. RetroMedia opens Monday to Friday, 9am to 5pm, and Saturday, 9am to 12pm. Saturday visits are for drop-offs, collections and enquiries only; specialist scanning technicians are on hand Monday to Friday.
RetroMedia's staff scan photo albums exactly as they are, page by page, through the plastic sleeve, using Capture Australia's technology, so nothing needs to come out. Loose prints of any size, and framed portraits and prints up to 45cm x 70cm, are scanned through the glass without removing them from the frame. Film, video, audio and negatives or slides are not part of this Capture Australia service. RetroMedia is an independent business and may also offer its own separate transfer services for these, including VHS and other video tape formats, 8mm and Super 8 film, audio cassettes and vinyl records, and negative or slide scanning; since RetroMedia sets and can change its own service line at any time, it's worth confirming current availability directly with them.
Walk in with your albums or prints, no appointment needed. A staff member checks what you've brought and gives you an estimated photo count and an indicative quote on the spot. Scanning happens on Capture Australia's equipment, installed at RetroMedia and run by RetroMedia's own trained staff, in the same shop where you dropped off, not sent to another branch or an outside lab. Once scanning is complete, the exact photo count is confirmed and that is what you pay on. You collect your original albums and prints together with your digital files, usually within two to three weeks.
Photographs stay at 249 Lutwyche Rd for the entire job. They are not freighted to a processing centre elsewhere and do not travel between Capture Australia partner branches. RetroMedia's staff scan them on site, using Capture Australia's equipment, and that is also where customers collect their originals and files.
Windsor's streets are lined with timber Queenslanders, high-set on stumps and wrapped in verandas, a style built from the 1840s onward to suit Queensland's climate. That same climate can let mould grow on old prints and album pages after sustained humidity above roughly 65% relative humidity and 70°F. Windsor has also lived through the more dramatic version of that risk: Tropical Cyclone Wanda's five days of rain in January 1974 flooded at least 6,700 homes across Brisbane and left Windsor among the suburbs pictured in the State Library of Queensland's flood photograph collection, and the Brisbane River rose again in January 2011, peaking at 4.46 metres in Brisbane City. A digital copy kept away from the original survives a flood, a burst pipe or a house fire even when the album on the shelf does not.
RetroMedia takes walk-ins Monday to Saturday, no appointment required. Originals stay at the Windsor store the whole time and are not sent to another Capture Australia branch. Most collections are ready in two to three weeks. Film, video, audio and negatives are not part of this scanning service, but RetroMedia may separately offer its own transfer services for these, worth confirming directly with them.
Looking for Brisbane details? See Photo Scanning in Brisbane for more on drop-off and coverage across the inner north.