Cherry Venture photos from slides

Thanks for the reminder, will ring him straight away. We can never forget his 60th out in the bush near Francis Creek with the Club in Darwin.
Mike.

G'Day DIO, Just a question about your scanning setting. At what size are you scanning the slides to? Are you scanning then at original size 33mmx24mm or for the type of print you expect to print? The reason i ask is for many years i have been scanning my 6x12 cm slides at original size ie 6x12cm. And when i printed an A4 print i wasnt very unimpressed at all with the quality. Then and only very recently i started scanning them at A4 size. So my file size for each slide went from @ 300dpi 8mb file up to a hard drive depleating 100mb file and the print quality is of a professional standard.I now use epson roll paper and print my 6x12's at 590mmx 210mm and they are as sharp as a pin.
Try for your self scan and print at normal scan setting of 33mmx24mm( or original setting on the screen) print an A4 then scan the slide at A4 measurments and print them then you will see the huge difference in quallity. I have a Epson 3200 scanner and an Epson R800 printer.

the size is not relevant .. the dpi is ..
when you want an A3 at 400 dpi (300 for average quality) you need
4800 pixels horizontal .. a 35mm slide scanned at 4800 dpi should do that...
the better Epsons do 4800 dpi or more ..
a minimum scan for print should be a 16MB tiff ...
A drum scan can do 6400dpi or more but most film material is too grainy beyond 4800 .. thats why people used MF for larger sizes ...

Scan as large as you can handle with your PC and keep the originals as "negatives". A good format is Adobe DNG (smaller non compressed) .. Never edit the original ..
derive the different print formats (web, photo kiosk, High res light jet print or whatever) from the original and store in appropriate format, eg. JPG or TIFF. Cheap labs dont accept large Tiffs and some people store their pics in JPG, which is not a good idea. Use a losless format for your original because every Save operation on a JPG does reduce quality.

good luck ..
gmd

Hi DIO,
We scan consumer negs/slides at 2700 dpi for the best trade off and save them as a compressed tiff.
We can scan higher but then as you have seen, the size gets unmanageable.
If we are sending them straight to the large format printer we scan them at 6400dpi.

The compressed tif is good as it remains editable with no loss but good mathematical compression. And it is compatible with most programs and labs.

If you have a large number of slides to scan, as your favourite lab for a bulk discount. They may appreciate the work (if they can still do it). They will put them on DVD and also may include 6x4's for little extra.

Only a minor nit pick from GMD's comment.... you will compress a jpg every time it is edited, saved, closed, opened, edited saved etc but you will not lose info every time it is saved and remains open (well that's the way Photoshop works anyway). I agree to steer clear of it for your primary unedited images though.

The main thing is to enjoy your images no matter what. Are we still going to have images to enjoy in 50 years time that we have taken and kept filed on CD/DVD/HDD and not printed or film archived??? I would love to be around to see what actually happens. :)

Cheers Cam

I get rather passionate about this ... this is our history which is getting lost by the bucket loads as folks with no interest in 35mm slides and no real way of looking at them send their family history off to the tip.

It is important to scan them well - perhaps 6400dpi is totally over the top - the initial resolving power of the lens and film for most consumer cameras will be something like 3000x2000 pixels - for professionals about 50% more in each dimension.

Having a scanner that doesn't clip the highlights and overly adjust contrast

Having good clean slides without dust or warping to start with

Are all important elements to a good process of capturing the images.

But the most important thing, is to do it, and then ensure that the CDs are sent to everyone with an interest in their content in a nice CD-case properly labelled so that there is some chance that they will be kept for posterity.

And good 120 format prints like mickjps, may well be of material that museums and libraries might like to get their hands on ... don't throw them out mickjp.

Cheers,
Andrew.

Hi Pixie,
1980 was the year, we drove from Adelaide via Innaminka. First time beach driving. Went on to Fraser from here. Huge adventure! Loved it so much moved to Bris soon after.
There was a live-aboard caretaker on the CV too. No-one could get onboard then!
Mike.