Re: filmscanners: Scanning negatives for archiving

[Arthur Entlich <artistic@ampsc.com>]

Alan Tyson wrote:

> 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 certainly don't disagree in terms of your parameters.  I tend to think 
of archiving as the act of saving an image or document in its purest 
form for later use.  But, that is really an unfair definition.  Archive 
just means to save something, and it might not require that it be saved 
in a very integral manner.  If that be the case then lower res scans or 
jpeging might indeed be appropriate.

Art