[filmscanners] RE: 3 year wait

["Mark Otway" <list@otway.com>]

>> 8000dpi scanners are here now, you just need to pay £13,000 
>> for them (Imacon 848).  The ppi is not really that important 
>> when scanning if getting every last bit of information is 
>> important.  That's where the density range of the scanner 
>> comes into play.  ppi is important for the final image size 
>> required and the target output medium. 

Strikes me that the biggest issue here is the storage. I mean, if these
images are being archived at full res (TIFFs) then even at 2900dpi (I've
got an LS-40), they're likely to come in at 20-30Mb per image. So 3,500
negatives is going to generate an archive of some 70-100Gb - a fairly
large archive, really, and in practical terms, fairly unmanageable.
Stored on a tape the pictures would be inaccessible without major
hassle, stored on a HDD they'd be at risk of hardware failure (okay, a
slim risk, but if it's your only archive...). You could burn 'em onto
100-odd CDs, or even 17 DVDs (probably the most practical solution,
realistically) but neither is very practical.

Get yourself a 4000dpi or 8000dpi scanner, and the numbers become
ludicrous.

My point is that if you're going to store these images in some sort of
compressed format (JPG, PNG, etc) in order to make the sheer volume of
storage become more manageable, a scanner such as a Coolscan IV will be
plenty good enough.

Strikes me that what you really need to assess is what the archive will
be used for in the future, and realistically how much detail that
application is likely to need. I, for example, store a 3-4Mb jpeg copy
of all my archived photos which is plenty enough for what I'm ever
likely to need. 

The other important point with that volume of negs is ease/speed of
scanning. I'm still working my way through my archive of negatives -
I've done about 2,700 so far. It's taken me since last November, doing
some most days... There are many occasions where I wished I'd had the
foresight to have the negatives processed without being cut into 4 or 6
frame strips - a film roll processor would have allowed me to batch-scan
a great deal faster than one strip at a time!

Mark

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