Re: scanning options for slide archival...

Don wrote
(in article <1k8p52hvvd3r88m7vic04a8gbams42192d@xxxxxxx>):

First of all a flatbed is not really suited for scanning film for a
number of reasons. If you do have a large number of slides and really
want to preserve them for posterity you should look into a film
scanner, budget permitting.

Well, I understand that is the case, but my plan is to basically
flag everything that looks like a "keeper" and worth trying to
get a great scan of, and weed out most of the rest on this pass,
but without throwing anything away unless it's just a blown
shot.

If I can weed this train wreck down to a few dozen or so
absolute winners, I'll worry about that when I get there.

As to archiving, even though your end goal is viewing on TV/monitor do
note that this resolution will change! And when it does then today's
"big" images will turn into "postage stamps" on future monitors (not
to mention the dynamic range). The same goes for printing.

3000x2000 (or higher with the bigger dpi values) seems like
enough to avoid postage stamp issues for quite a while, but I
see your point.

So, if archiving (i.e. preservation) is the underlying goal you should
really scan at maximum resolution and bit depth. Don't do any editing
(especially not in the scanner software which, as a rule, only has a
limited subset of editing tools) but scan "raw". That will be your
"digital negative" which is burned to DVDs or archived in some other
manner. Once that is done you have halted and "frozen" any future film
deterioration.

The freebie software is horrible. For example, every time
(okay, 9/10 times) you go to save a file after the scan is
completed, it will save the file in the wrong format. It keeps
trying to "phone home" to jpg, no matter what. You type in the
filename, it defaults back to jpeg every single time no matter
what, you save it anyway with tiff selected, one look at the
file size and you know it failed, and you do a save as on top of
it and RE-enter tiff again, and it will take the second time.
Canon sucks to ship crap software like this. It's not making
have a strong desire to rush out and buy any more Canon
hardware, I can tell you that. :-( No desire to spend any
time editing in there at all.

After that you use this "digital negative" and create a copy "for
consumption" namely edit, reduce resolution, convert to JPG, etc. In a
couple of years when you get a new larger monitor or HDTV or a new
printer, you (or your descendents) can always go back and create
another image "for consumption" to suit the new devices.

I understand that process, basically the same as shooting in RAW
nowadays. I always keep a clean copy. The only debate is
whether or not it's worth doing them all at max res. Due to the
aging that is going on with a lot of them, it's just not worth
it at this point for a lot of these. Of course, it may just be
certain batches that are this bad, I won't know for quite a
while. Most are suitable for a video slideshow, but less than a
dozen so far are what you might consider suitable for framing.

It is stunning to look at, for example, what Las Vegas, the
Grand Canyon or Waikiki beach looked like over 40 years ago.
Wow, what a change. And actual blue skies, instead of haze and
smog. Looking at before and after shots of some of these
locations is enough to make an environmentalist out of almost
anyone. :-)

Now, you may not care for any of that, and there's nothing wrong with
scanning to suit your current devices. I'm just mentioning it as
something to consider up front because, as you say, it can be very
tedious having to go back and start from scratch all over again.

Well, I am lucky that there are years and in some cases months
on the majority of the slide mounts, and I am going through the
tedious process of sorting them (better than they were after 40
years of storage and loading/unloading into projector trays) and
naming the files in a directory hierarchy so that if anything
pops up as being worthy of a rescan it will be much easier to
locate. I can pretty much tell though as they come off the
scanner if they're worth higher res, and in those cases I'm
doing in place before they get sorted back.

The "proper" workflow is to scan at maximum scanner bit depth and
native resolution without using any of the scanner software editing
features (e.g. curves etc). The only exception is ICE due to the way
it's implemented (for marketing reasons :-/).

What's the marketing reference?



--
Randy Howard (2reply remove FOOBAR)
"The power of accurate observation is called cynicism by those
who have not got it." - George Bernard Shaw





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