Re: filmscanners: Scanning negatives for archiving

["Alan Tyson" <AlanTyson@bknowl.freeserve.co.uk>]

Khalid said:

> > 2-    What file Format should I use to save?
>
Arthur said:

> TIFF or any other you think you will be able to read years
from now,
> which is lossless.  That precludes JPEG

Alan T says:

Arthur,

Khalid didn't give us any clues on just how perfect an
archive of his negs he wants. If he wants the best digital
representation of his life's works, you're completely
correct, of course.

However, he might not be so fussy, and like me,  might wish
to save *all* his pictures, but only a *few* little gems to
high standards. As a 3MB "90% quality" jpeg of a 2700dpi
frame is visually indistinguishable from the tiff when
viewed at "1:1", surely that standard will do for many
purposes? He'll get 200 of them on one disk, instead of 2
disks per film as tiffs, and the data will be easier to
transfer to a new medium in n years' time.

I'm writing this because today I was taught a lesson about
it. Our village in rural England has run a "millennium
project", where all the properties have been photographed,
with occupants outside where possible. Getting the output to
the population at reasonable cost is problematical. When I
got involved, the films had been exposed but not processed.
I suggested PhotoCD, so that everyone who had, or might have
a computer could have a copy of all the images for their
grandchildren, at little cost.

Through a series of misunderstandings, and the possible
withdrawal of cheap high-street Kodak *PhotoCD* here due to
lack of demand, we've finished up with Kodak *PictureCD*
instead. Initially, I thought this a bit of a disaster.
There are 7 CDs, each consisting almost entirely of Kodak's
software. The data, as approx 1500x1000pixel 500KB jpegs at,
I estimate, "95% quality" takes up 102MB altogether,
complete with a freeware image viewer, when I transcribe it
to a CD-R.

On viewing the images on screen (only 17" 800x600, I fear),
I realise that it's fine; everyone but critical
photographers will think the results are wonderful. I think
most of them would even be pleased with A4 prints from these
images at only 100 dpi or so.

So I still contend that jpeg archiving has its place among
rough & ready filmscanners.

Regards,

Alan T

----- Original Message -----
From: Arthur Entlich <artistic@ampsc.com>
To: <filmscanners@halftone.co.uk>
Sent: Monday, March 12, 2001 10:33 PM
Subject: Re: filmscanners: Scanning negatives for archiving