[filmscanners] RE: keeping the 16bit scans

["LAURIE SOLOMON" <laurie@advancenet.net>]

While I am sure that your question, which is an old and frequently
reoccurring one for which there is no one correct answer, will surely
stimulate yet another protracted debate among advocates for 16 bit versus
those for 8 bit, I would suggestet that since it is mostly a question of
storage space vs perceived risks of quality that you keep your 16 bit scans
as 16 bit scans to be on the safe side and preserve your feelings of
security while going out and purchasing a CD or DVD burner so that you can
free up storage space by transfering the scans to CDs or DVDs.  The costs of
CD burners as well as CD-Rs have come down in price to a point where they
are more than affordable; and DVD burners and DVDs while more expensive are
heading down the same road.

I suppose the next debatable question will be how safe and archival are
CD-Rs and DVDs. :-)  I would say probably as safe and archival as your hard
drive.  They probably would need to be be replaced over time with new media
at which time you probably will want or need to update the media to the
latest technologies that have come into existence at that point in time
(since CD-R and DVDs like harddrives do or will tend to become obsolete with
changes in technology or technological developments).  Nevertheless, I would
suggest that the period of non-obsolesence for CD-Rs and DVDs will probably
be longer than for compuiter motherboards, printers, scanners, or software.
I would also say that they would probably have a lifespan as funtioning
types of media that rival that of floppies, although individual CDs and DVDs
may fail at a quicker rate or within a shorter time period than is the case
for the obsolescence of the media type.  Over the past 10 years, we have
experienced changes in hard drive technologies, speeds, sizes, and types of
connections such that older hard drives even if they still work will not
work in some of the newer system configurations or do not offer the required
storage space, which has required us to update our hard drives to newer
larger, faster ones the incorporate the newer hard drive technologies.
Thus, CDs and DVD should not be expected to be any different.

The one caveat with respect to DVDs and DVD burners - apart from their still
relatively high costs - is that one migh wait for the format battle to
settle out between + and - formats or get a burner like the Sony which will
work wioth both formats.  Currently, it is like buying a VCR during the
period when a battle ranged between Batamax and VHS.

-----Original Message-----
From: filmscanners_owner@halftone.co.uk
[mailto:filmscanners_owner@halftone.co.uk]On Behalf Of Ed Verkaik
Sent: Friday, March 28, 2003 10:56 AM
To: laurie@advancenet.net
Subject: [filmscanners] keeping the 16bit scans


Fellow scanners,

I've been scanning slides on the 4000ED, correcting, then saving the
16bit files as my masters. It's beginning to get crowded on my h.d.  My
reasoning for keeping 16bit rather than 8bit was because I figured if I
had to do a little more adjusting of curves, etc. then the files would
handle it better. Am I right?  What's the difference in likely outcome
(quality) if I did further (minor) edits on a 16bit/110mb instead of an
8bit/55mb file?  Rescanning of these would require up to an hour each of
spotting because they're older Kodachromes so it comes down to storage
space vs risks on quality.

Thanks for any advice.
Ed Verkaik

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