I have been working on scanning my 35MM negatives so I can have a digital copy of everything. I actually had Costco do some of mine, but they just did kind of "OK". I think the scanned resolution was something like 72dpi. They apparently got a new machine, so it might be better, but I thought I might give it a whirl. I have a few hundred images, but probably not thousands.
The goal is to have a reasonable representation of my negative collection. Some of them aren't the greatest, some are fantastic, and most I'd probably not really do anything with but flip through every once in a while to reminisce (old friends, family, etc).
The scanner I am using is a Canon 8800F. Not the best thing ever, but it does a pretty decent job (as long as I can keep the extra fuzz off the film). Having a service to this is usually pretty expensive--usually at least $1.50 a frame--so other than Costco scanning them on my own, this is probably the way to go. I'd maybe consider having a select few done by a shop that has a drum scanner, but a very select few.
So, for the ones I really like, I've been doing the full capability of the scanner--9600DPI with "flexible" resolution in a TIFF format. This is usually about 13500x9000, and anywhere from 40MB (LZW compressed B&W) on up to about 350MB (color) negative. It also takes about an hour to scan 8 frames.
I figure hi-res TIFF is best for archiving, and I can actually notice a difference in the scan quality if the negative is good from the lower DPI.
What I'm really curious is--what would be a good format for everything else? I've started to play around with JPEG scans in various DPI and sizes, and think I've come up with one that is fairly decent. I scanned several at 300DPI, with a size of 3087x2048 (JPEG). This seems to be fairly quick, not any slower than lower DPI, but moving up tends to slow down pretty fast.
It's somewhat easier to make a good, backed up, digital archive of the prints, so I want a format/size that will be pretty dependable over time. I realize no format is safe, but TIFF and JPEG have been around a long time.
Does anyone have any other suggestions that might be better, maybe someone that uses this same scanner?
The goal is to have a reasonable representation of my negative collection. Some of them aren't the greatest, some are fantastic, and most I'd probably not really do anything with but flip through every once in a while to reminisce (old friends, family, etc).
The scanner I am using is a Canon 8800F. Not the best thing ever, but it does a pretty decent job (as long as I can keep the extra fuzz off the film). Having a service to this is usually pretty expensive--usually at least $1.50 a frame--so other than Costco scanning them on my own, this is probably the way to go. I'd maybe consider having a select few done by a shop that has a drum scanner, but a very select few.
So, for the ones I really like, I've been doing the full capability of the scanner--9600DPI with "flexible" resolution in a TIFF format. This is usually about 13500x9000, and anywhere from 40MB (LZW compressed B&W) on up to about 350MB (color) negative. It also takes about an hour to scan 8 frames.
I figure hi-res TIFF is best for archiving, and I can actually notice a difference in the scan quality if the negative is good from the lower DPI.
What I'm really curious is--what would be a good format for everything else? I've started to play around with JPEG scans in various DPI and sizes, and think I've come up with one that is fairly decent. I scanned several at 300DPI, with a size of 3087x2048 (JPEG). This seems to be fairly quick, not any slower than lower DPI, but moving up tends to slow down pretty fast.
It's somewhat easier to make a good, backed up, digital archive of the prints, so I want a format/size that will be pretty dependable over time. I realize no format is safe, but TIFF and JPEG have been around a long time.
Does anyone have any other suggestions that might be better, maybe someone that uses this same scanner?