Slides on to CD

The only problem I have had with saving images as large files, even as jpg’s, is that sometimes it is impossible to reopen them due to memory constraints – and my machine has 750Mb RAM ! Regarding storage, a DVD writer can now be had for around the £60 mark and using Nero 6 gives 4.7 Gb as opposed to the 700Mb of a CD. I have made a lens adaptor for photographing slides using my digital camera, it seems to give better results than my scanner.

I personally burn 2 cd’s of the same photos and put the photos on 2 separate hard drives as well [lessons learnt from friends hard drive crashing and losing alot of stuff].
CD R’s are so cheap i would’nt think that space is really an issue,but what i would like to know is,
What is the life of a cd? i have heard you should copy the cd’s every year.
More by luck than judgement i tend to copy the photos [jpegs] before i do any altering of them.
Sorry another quick question,i have noticed that my slides when scanned show the blue skies as very inaccurate so i have to alter them manually although when i look at the slides through the mark 1 eyeball the colours seem fine,many thanks 🙂

CDRs are cheap – save them at the highest possible quality. Indeed, simply copy the original files. Scan them at the best possible image resolution you can, too. Then catalogue your CDs so you know what’s where.

I’m presuming your need is to keep these images for the future, rather than worry about how few CDs you can squeeze them on to.

That way, whatever your needs might be in the future, you’ll have as close to the original as you can get.

Write protect any image files you have on your hard drive, which haven’t been written to CD – so that you don’t accidentally overwrite with edited/cropped or loss of quality through compression differences.

Scanning

Thanks everbody for your help, i have an microtek 4000t scanner but i don’t
think i’m geting the most out of it.
Phil.

I should also add that the higher the dpi you use, the less images you will get on each CD. I scan my slides at 300dpi, as I could go up to 8400dpi with with Epson Perfection 1200 PHOTO scanner, but there is no point, as 300dpi give me superb 6″X 4″ prints and is also the lowest resolution any publication will use. If you use higher than 300dpi, you will soon fill up stacks of CDs!

Jpegs and tiffs

On the subject of jpegs or tiffs. As long ans your image is burned to a hard drive or cd a jpeg is fine. However the more you open a jpeg in a editing program like photoshop and save it the more distorted it will become. This is because of the fact that each time you open and close the file it will decompress and compress differently. A Tiff file is an uncompressed image and therefore you can open it and edit it without the file being altered by compression.
Neil Medcalf

Digtial files

I’ll try and answer your original question. As I work as a photo technician I hope my 2 cents (Canadian) will help.
DPI is all relative to the output or the orginal scan. You comment on 800 pixels but you don’t say what from? First the industry standard here is 300 dpi for the output. Anything smaller is visible to the eye as pixels. Now for a 300 dpi output to get a 4×6 print you therefore require an image thats 1200 x 1600 pixels. And for an 8×10 you would need 2400 x 3000 pixels. Just divide your required print size by 300 and you have the required image size.

As far as scanning ( input) is concerned it depends on the orginal – neg, slide, or print or digital camera. Again you have to decide what your final print size or quality you’d like to have in the end. My lab scans negs and slides at 5000 dpi and we are able to produce a print of 10×15 from that scan rate, with the output at 300 dpi.
So an 800 dpi scan from a slide would result in digital image of about 700 x 1000 dpi and at an output of 300 dpi would give a print size of 2.3 x 3.6 in.
In the long run use as large a scan rate and file size as you can.
Hope this helps –
Neil Medcalf

Bruggen 130, Phil,
I have been scanning then transferring my slides at 2400 dpi as jpegs onto cd.I have an Epson 2400 photo scanner and it seems very good.I’m not sure what a professional photographer/digital operator would suggest,it just seems ok for me but i have heard that people prefer to use TIFFS instead of JPEGS but seems ok to me as i don’t really go too deep into it. 🙂

Here we go – a bit more information in this thread:

http://forum.keypublishing.co.uk/showthread.php?t=21389

Thanks Phil,

What are the plans for her? When I was at Abingdon in the late 80’s I managed to get myself pictured in her. My first and only sit in a Spitfire! At the same time we had MK356 in for the pre restoration inspection work.

I think it’s very long term restoration, they work on it when they can.
Fluffy Might know more– 😉
Phil.

Thanks Phil,

What are the plans for her? When I was at Abingdon in the late 80’s I managed to get myself pictured in her. My first and only sit in a Spitfire! At the same time we had MK356 in for the pre restoration inspection work.

Phil,

Which is the Spit in the background with the teardrop canopy? is it TE311?

Yes it is, here’s another one.— 🙂
Phil

Phil,

Which is the Spit in the background with the teardrop canopy? is it TE311?