[filmscanners] Re: Nikon scanner availability
Arthur Entlich wrote: When was the last time you saw a 8mm movie film to video transfer system sold retail? I imagine there are some commercial outfits still offering video transfer services, but even those are probably disappearing. How popular were 8mm movies as compared to still photos (to compare their market sizes)? I have no idea, not having been a film-movie person (started with a VHS + video camera about 20~25 years ago or so). How many still film photos exist to be converted as compared to 8mm films to be converted ? What I am getting at is this: Film will become specialty product, available by special order or through a few minimal manufacturers. Non-commerical dedicated film scanners will disappear, as flatbeds take over that market niche. Even the flatbed market long full of brands and models has reduced to a handful. I wonder how many mfgrs there ever has been (as opposed to marketing companies OEMing product). But I think you're right. Will the prices on these last dedicated film scanners suddenly skyrocket? Not likely. Did 8mm film cameras skyrocket when video came out? Has the cost of 35mm camera bodies skyrocketed as the digital camera market took over? I think we're still in the film-digital conversion stage. There still are film cameras for sale new, and there still is a lot of film being sold even if it's a less massive number than previously. So conversion needs should remain significant for a while longer, but it'll eventually end the way you say, for sure. What probably will happen, is several commercial labs will offer reasonably priced scanning services, since they will need to maintain scanners so when people bring in old film based images for printing, they can make prints. If prints survive the digital trend. Prints (even if digitially printed) seem so *analog*. :-) Maybe programmable electronic paper will make the printing companies go bye bye as well. The days of demand crunches causing price increases on basically obsolete products is over. It almost never occurs anymore, because people recognize the next generation or product is usually cheaper and offers more options. If you honestly believe, for instance, CRT monitors are going to become pricey as they stop manufacture, I've got some to sell you ;-) They will eventually become spendy, but not any time soon. Only when the units being made are only very small niche specialized ones made in small volumes (where current cheapie ones aren't applicable). There are very very spendy high-end CRT based monitors available for purchase now. The only way I could see something like a dedicated film scanner becoming more valuable is because it became a collector's item, sort of like a DeLorean car, Maybe someday people will be dragging old XT computers and film scanners to the Antique RoadShow, but it may be a while yet ;-) Kinda, but XT's are a bit different. My current multi-Ghz computer I'm writing on can run the very same application binaries that DOS XT could (theoretically anyway). The film scanner as such won't be replaced by a super-set, it'll just be a product who's need has gone away. Perhaps subtle, but not quite the same. If new ones become unavailable, used prices may go up (depending upon supply/demand dynamics) because there will be a long lasting need for them (for procrastinators) even after need has dropped too low for sustaining a business selling new scanners. Unless the flatbeds get so good that they really are obsolete in which case they'll just be $5 items at goodwill (that don't sell). Mike K. Unsubscribe by mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], with 'unsubscribe filmscanners' or 'unsubscribe filmscanners_digest' (as appropriate) in the message title or body
[filmscanners] Re: CS 5000 ED vs. Minolta ???
Laurie Solomon wrote: So Mike what you are saying is that unless the Nikon has a manual focus like the Minolta does the problem is not correctable with the Nikon scanner but is correctable with the Minolta; but both scanners have the problem under the autofocus option. No, I don't think I said that. I only talked about one or two aspects of Minolta's problem with the default autofocus (using their software). After all, that's half of the subject and the half I know at least a little about (having one). As to it applying to the Nikon scanner, I leave others with the Nikon to provide the comparison after my mentioning details in the 5400 and how I get around it. I'm not attacking the Nikon as you suggest, I don't have one and don't know enough to say anything about it. In any case, although I have used the manual focus knob, I've found it also useful to use autofocus, however I set the focus point on the slide to a more appropriate point rather than the default dead-center. Mike K. Unsubscribe by mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], with 'unsubscribe filmscanners' or 'unsubscribe filmscanners_digest' (as appropriate) in the message title or body
[filmscanners] Re: Archiving???!!!
Arthur Entlich wrote: And even if a neg was to get scratched or damaged, that is repairable. However, a slight scratch on a CD may make it completely unreadable. Note that there are software utilities for reading CD's that have errors to extract the files anyway. One I've seen (can if config'd) ask you (over and over again) if you want to try and re-read the data-block (within the file) that errored. Ad-infinitum. Even if an error persists, you can still extract files with those errors in them, so one may still have a photo but with a blotch in the file (like a scratch, with severity depending on data format, error location, error size, etc). Of course if the scratch is in the most inappropriate spot of the CD, things could get harder I suspect. :-) Mike K. Unsubscribe by mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], with 'unsubscribe filmscanners' or 'unsubscribe filmscanners_digest' (as appropriate) in the message title or body
[filmscanners] Re: Software dust removal
Chris Aitken wrote: Hi All, Further to my previous messages I have obtained a Scan Dual I on trial. I have tried it with the Vuescan trial version (and also the Minolta drivers - so this must be a later model that works on XP). As an alternative to blasting air at the negative before scanning as mentioned to you already, there's a brush called 'staticmaster that has a polonium strip near the brush end that puts out alpha particles (can't penetrate a sheet of paper, at best can do only inches of air). It removes static instantly from the film at which point the very soft brush works very effectively. Half life of the polonium is very short so it's cartridge needs to be replaced yearly (and buying old ones isn't useful). They've been around for at least a half century or so, and I just got another one a couple days ago for use with my new film scanner. The other thing is the obvious nobody's going to mention. Borrow a different scanner, one that features ICE in the software. Gets rid of dust and scratches amazingly and automatically. :-) Mike K. Unsubscribe by mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], with 'unsubscribe filmscanners' or 'unsubscribe filmscanners_digest' (as appropriate) in the message title or body
[filmscanners] Re: Interferences
Arthur Entlich wrote: Although I won't go as far as to say all cables are made the same or by only a few sources, I will say that most off branded cables are made to similar construction specifications and are often from the same off-shore locations. Also, many companies that make low-cost cables (and other things for that matter) clone products of other companies. You may have them side by side and think they're made by the same company and they may not be. Mike K. (AKA A. Moose) Unsubscribe by mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], with 'unsubscribe filmscanners' or 'unsubscribe filmscanners_digest' (as appropriate) in the message title or body
[filmscanners] Re: Revive this list?!
My two cents is that the value of this list is its expertise in film scanners. It's a film scanner group, not a group that happens to talk about film scanners. If one just wanted the group to be more talkative for the group's sake, we could just start talking about politics or religion and have perhaps tremendous volume, but what's the point? If the subject is changed, the people in the group will likely change, and the great film scanner group resource will be gone. I also will say that it's my observation that the group gets talkative in spurts. Sometimes excessive spurts. :-) I for one, hope a Minolta 5400 thread will go on at some point (I may start it, perhaps later) because I'm considering getting a high quality film scanner for my birthday in November, but don't think I can justify over the 700 or so that the Minolta goes for. Where else could I get the expertise? So, I'd rather not have people with expertise leave the list because of the list's topic changing for the sake of more email volume. Mike K. Unsubscribe by mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], with 'unsubscribe filmscanners' or 'unsubscribe filmscanners_digest' (as appropriate) in the message title or body
[filmscanners] Re: Spam Alert: Re: Digital Cameras coming down toearth
Clive Moss wrote: At 05:18 PM 9/30/2003, Arthur Entlich wrote: he told me he goes to Costco for his processing and printing, and they charge something like $5 for developing and printing a 24 exposure to 4x6 prints. Our local Walgreens' was doing 4x6s from digital media for US $0.29 each. The infrastructure for getting hassle free prints mass market prints is developing (so to speak) really fast. Since the costs of kiosk prints from digital will tend to be lower (to the Walgreens of this world) than chemical film development, I suspect that digital will win on both convenience and cost grounds very shortly. I just had a roll processed at Costco. 36-exp roll, two 4x6 prints per image. Costed $5.99 (U.S.). That's about $0.08 per photo even if the C41 film processing is considered as free. If I throw half the photos away into the garbage, then it's still only $0.16 net per print. Mike K. P.S. - Plus they provide an index thumbnail print which in the above calculations also is considered free. They use Kodak paper. Unsubscribe by mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], with 'unsubscribe filmscanners' or 'unsubscribe filmscanners_digest' (as appropriate) in the message title or body
[filmscanners] Re: Cleaning slides and negs prior to scanning
Mario Teixeira wrote: Thomas Maugham [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Can anyone suggest a good way to clean slides and negs prior to scanning? I clean the best I can with a soft brush and light puffs of air but still wind up with dust on my scans. I verified that the dust is not in my scanner. I'd like to get as much off the originals as possible as I don't like to use dust spotting tools as I feel that they degrade the image. Although in my current house where dust levels are a great deal lower than in my previous house (probably partly due to now having an electronic house filter of the Honeywell variety), I still need to remove a little dust. What works wonderfully is something that's been around for a half century or so (at least). It's a Staticmaster brush. Comes in several sizes with soft bristles, but its trick is a strip of polonium near the base of the bristles. It radiates alpha particles out a couple inches and eliminates static -- which is why it's so effective at brushing off dust. The polonium strip module needs to be replaced periodically, its half-life is pretty quick (but is effective for quite a few half-lives). Not something to buy an old one of (other than for the brush, which is, a good one). Mike K. Unsubscribe by mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], with 'unsubscribe filmscanners' or 'unsubscribe filmscanners_digest' (as appropriate) in the message title or body
[filmscanners] Re: Film resolution - was: Re: 3 year wait
Austin Franklin wrote: Well, the fact is, when sampling audio, the odds are that the Nyquist sample rate (or anything but an infinite sample rate for that matter) won't catch the full amplitude of the signal, it only sees the voltage when in time the sample was taken, and it could be anywhere in the entire signal. Yes, but as you know full well (because you understand Nyquist) the full peak voltage is theoretically 100% derivable from those samples even though no sample was anywhere near the peak. Mike K. Unsubscribe by mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], with 'unsubscribe filmscanners' or 'unsubscribe filmscanners_digest' (as appropriate) in the message title or body
[filmscanners] Re: 3 year wait
Op's wrote: The image is rasterized into its components - this rasterization can be 4K (or smaller) (4032x2689) to 8K ( 8192x5461) ppi that's Polaroids figures. and these pixels are then broken down into 3 intensities of brightness for 3 filter values to make a colour (8 or 12 bits). You're describing 9 states (3 colors 3 states per color) which is a total of being a hair over 3-bits of color. This seems odd seeing as how Polaroid claims 36 bit color (12-bits per color, or in other words, 4,098 brightness levels for each of the three colors). Mike K. P.S. - I also know from looking at the output that it has a great deal more brigtnesses per color than 3. It'll do a nice white to dark-color color-ramp that's quite smooth. Unsubscribe by mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], with 'unsubscribe filmscanners' or 'unsubscribe filmscanners_digest' (as appropriate) in the message title or body
[filmscanners] Re: 3 year wait
Austin Franklin wrote: But do they say ppi related to the recording output, and if so, is that the maximum, and when projecting onto larger film formats, obviously that ppi decreases? Again, from what you show for figures, it looks to be that 4k or 8k refers only to the physical number pixels of the imaging device on the long side. I don't believe it is meant to be ppi, since for the long side of a 35mm projection, it would be 4k/8k projected across ~1.4...and therefore be ~2850ppi (for a 4k recorder obviously). Now, the imaging Yes, that's about right. device may in fact be 1 along the 4k/8k side, and how relevant is that really, compared to the output ppi (which is what we've been talking about I believe)? My polaroid 7000 does 4K regardless of the size film (although in truth, the 7000 only officially supports 35mm). For larger film, the 8K is recommended because the difference is noticeable when the 4K points is spread out on a larger film. Mike K. Unsubscribe by mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], with 'unsubscribe filmscanners' or 'unsubscribe filmscanners_digest' (as appropriate) in the message title or body
Re: filmscanners: Polaroid 4000 dpi
Charles Platt wrote: Not sure what you're doing that's extreme, but with my Sprintscan 35/ES (same as plain 35 I think), using Ed's Vuescan with the scan count set to eight passes, noise in the shadows is reduced quite a lot, and the time it takes isn't too horrible so long as I'm only doing a few slides. :-) EIGHT passes?! Even if I was scanning just one slide, I doubt I would be patient enough for that If I'm doing a slide for subsequent reproduction in print, I may gaussian blur the darkest areas, then use Photoshop's grain filter to give them texture comparable to the rest of the image. I figure that dot gain in the printed version would lose most of the detail in the really dense areas anyway; but if I left the noise uncorrected, some of it might be barely visible. I think the eight passes is quite a bit faster than doing all of that and probably does quite a bit better job. Try it at least once, for fun. :-) Mike K.
Re: filmscanners: Polaroid 4000 dpi
Hemingway, David J wrote: I have an aging Polaroid Sprintscan 35, and I want to upgrade for the higher resolution and better dynamic range. I'm really sick of having to resort to extreme measures to get rid of noise in shadows. Not sure what you're doing that's extreme, but with my Sprintscan 35/ES (same as plain 35 I think), using Ed's Vuescan with the scan count set to eight passes, noise in the shadows is reduced quite a lot, and the time it takes isn't too horrible so long as I'm only doing a few slides. :-) Mike K.
Re: filmscanners: Canon Flatbed D2400UF
Eddie Cairns wrote: The 33 Mhz PCI bus also is 32-bits wide, so that's about 900-megaBITS in raw bandwidth (PCI can't really go quite this fast, but let's not go there just now). Of course, some other master might want to use the PCI bus too. :-) Mike K. P.S. - There also is a 66-Mhz PCI bus, and some PCI busses are 64-bits wide. And some are "both". :-) The speed of the PCI bus is at best 33Meg so unless the firewire socket is integrated on the motherboard there is an other possible bottleneck! Firewire is 400Mbit per sec (50MB) max , USB is 12Mbit max per sec (1.5MB).
Re: filmscanners: OT: burning CDs/easy cd creator
Eli Bowen wrote: The CDs often have errors that are not reported by Easy CD Creator; I only find out later when the disk stops playing halfway through a song or starts "dropping" chunks of music or starts making noises that shouldn't be there. I get this even when playing the CD back on the same machine on which it was recorded and even on CDs burned at 1X speed. How would the program know if there is an error on the CD? Do you have it set to "verify files" after burning the CD, or is it "finished" after the burning run (and it reports no errors)? The programming of the disk is open-loop, it can only tell the drive to write all this stuff to the disk (and is busy enough just doing that), but it does have the option to check afterwards (at least for data CD's, haven't tried for audio ones). It's in an odd place though, it's in the file-"CD Layout Properties" menu with a check box for "Automatically verify file system". I don't think drives can read-back the data from the disk real-time while it's being written. Would be nice, but I don't think they can do that yet (as some tape-backup drives can do now). Mike K.
Re: filmscanners: Puzzled about display resolution
Stuart wrote: Once again, everything you say is likely true in the United States of Waste and Consumption, but it sure isn't true here in Western Canada, and I bet it also isn't true in Europe, Australia, and most other places. Art What !!- u mean there are other countries in the world apart from America -well blow me down . Stuart (Scotland ) One of the newer PC vendors in town (here in Oregon, U.S.A.) is a Tiny one from the U.K., and they advertise they have the best deals. so I'd then assume that the U.K. would perhaps have even lower prices than here in the U.S. (and this area has generally low prices with heavy competition from small chains like Fry's and klone-stores on most every corner). Mike K.
Re: filmscanners: Puzzled about display resolution
Arthur Entlich wrote: Lastly, even if my video card and monitor can produce 1600 x 1200 pixel screen, I'd be unlikely to use it that way, due to the way it would shrink icons, cursor and tool sizes on a 17" screen. I think the sweetspot is now at 19". My wife, who uses her PC mostly for email, has a 19", and it wasn't expensive (albeit not a top brand). I've got a 21" one (and am running the 1600x1200 mentioned). I think 17" ones are about the smallest one can buy nowdays (other than for LCD flatpanels). "Shrinking icons", etc, can be a problem sometimes (in Adobe Golive in particular), but it's also the reason to run the higher resolution. Doing so "fits" more things on the screen at once. Mike K.
Re: filmscanners: Need feedback on VueScan Idea
Jim Snyder wrote: But, a properly designed program usually uses speed keys for the buttons anyway, and location is not a concern. I have yet to meet many users that don't recohgnize the efficiencies picked up by shortcuts, aliases, and speed keys. Even the function keys can be programmed to handle the tabs. You're suggesting to get rid of the menus and buttons inasmuch as their design doesn't matter and just have shortcuts, aliases, and speed keys? How about a CLI? Mike K. Jim Snyder, Software Engineer
Re: filmscanners: OT: dyesub printers (long)
Arthur Entlich wrote: you also use a full series of panels. So, place just one dot the size of a period anywhere in the image, and the printer will use up a full set of ink panels to do that. Consumable costs are constant. You do This isn't true of my Alps MD-1300. It would only use a teeny bit of the ribbon when passing over that spot. not want to waste dye sub prints. Unlike an inkjet where you can do small tests, or stop printing early if you see a problem with color balance, etc, no such luck with dye sub. As I mention above, this is true for Alps's dyesub printers, or at least mine. :-) Alps tried to resolve part of this and lower consumable costs by using a series of ribbons rather than panels, but they could never fully resolve the problems with banding caused by the way the inks were laid down on the transfer sheet. Same problem as inkjets that don't print the whole page in one pass of the head. :-) It hasn't been a problem with my machine, but some have reported problems with theirs (at least some models have a home calibration proceedure to "fix" this, don't know if that had been done for those with problems). Mike K.
Re: filmscanners: real value?
Laurie Solomon wrote: Ian, Partial possible answers to your question are: I wonder why there are so few people film scanning then printing with dye sublimation printers? (1) Dye sublimation printers may be too costly as compared to inkjet printers both to purchase and to operate given the cost of expendables. Although perhaps true in the U.S. now that ALPS has stopped selling their low-cost dye-sub printers here (I am still using mine), Oki is still selling them in some countries (as an OEM product). At least for mine, the runtime costs are similar to a photo-inkjet (which my wife's printer is one of). Printer costed a bit more than an inkjet, but that difference is not significant over the life of the printer (where runtime costs dominate). Price was about double an inkjet's cost (which is to say, still not much). I have an Alps MD-1300. (2) Dye sublimation prints are even more fragile than inkjet prints in terms of longevity in the case of resistance to heat and water among other factors so I am told. At least in terms of mine, the opposite is true. One can crunch the print up in a ball and flatten it out w/o problems to the image (other than for obvious creases in the paper). One can stick it under a faucet of running water *immediately* after coming out of the printer. It's completely waterproof and never had any liquid used in it's processing (the pigments were sublimated, solid-gas-solid). Longevity is supposed to be archival. The Alps units, at least, are technically pigment-sublimation printers. :-) (3) Inkjets have reached the level where there quality and other features come very close to those, if not in some instances surpass those, of inkjets. Perhaps some inkjets over some dye-subs. Some dyesubs are only 200 dpi or less, the alps prints at 600 dpi. Note that each dot has a full range of colors -- not like the three to six colors that inkjet dots have. But indeed, some inkjets are very very good. :-) With Alps out of the U.S. market, my next printer when the Alps breaks will undoubtedly have to be an inkjet. (4) There is more development going on in regard to inkjet and laser technologies than in dye sublimation technologies, which it appears - relatively speaking - has been orphaned, which makes people uncomfortable in investing in a product that might be abandoned in the near future so as to make getting expendables difficult and expensive. For business applications, lasers are probably the future with the speed and volume needed in the printer -- plus cost per print. My Alps printer prints photos very well, but it is *SLOW*. For me, I'll take the slug slow printing (not that inkjets aren't slugs too) to have the price low -- but a business would value it's time to make that unacceptable. Alps quit selling in the U.S. (IMO) because it wasn't a business printer (other than maybe light duty in small businesses) while simultaneously they wouldn't/couldn't compete in the distribution-game having to sell the printers at cost (or less) and making it up on the runtime materials. Mass home sales go to low initial price over quality. :-( BW - I see no mention of this is any Dye sub printer literature (1) Expense of printers and expendables as noted above. (2) Difficulty getting good black and white tonal range using just the black on the dye sub black dye ribbon and getting rich blacks when trying to obtain black from a mixture of the other color dyes. A fellow who works for a local printer-making company I know was surprised how good the blacks were on my Alps dye-sub because in dye-sub mode it is a CMY+overcoat printer. But I know that has been a problem for some dyesubs (as well as inkjets that ran in CMY mode back when those were still being made). I'm kind of happily glad about how well blacks turn out as well. Odd way to do a dye-sub BW, but it's how I do it, and it works well. If one is in the U.K., check out Oki's line of dysub printers, the ALPS MD-5000 is probably "something"-5000, and in that one dye-sub printing is an option. There is a new semi-professional model coming out soon that prints large pages (etc) that sounds quite interesting! But it won't be available here in the states. :-( Mike K.
Re: Provia 400F (Was filmscanners: orange mask)
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I'm from the old black and white school of hard knocks. If I wanted fine grain I shot a slow film, asa 50 or slower. For a higher speed and still fine grain Tri-X. With "fast" Provia 100F there isn't much grain to look at. :-) If I wanted a tighter grain in Provia why wouldn't I shoot 400 instread of pushing 100 to 400? Rumour has it that one gets less grain with 100F pushed than using 400F. 100F is a really nice film. Caused me to stop using Kodachrome 64. Mike K.
Re: filmscanners: Re: Provia 400F
Michael Wilkinson wrote: I can not for the life of me understand anyone prefers to uprate and overdevelop film when film of the higher speed is readily available . One reason is that the pushed film will have less grain than the non-pushed one, and for those of us who are particularly grain-adverse will prefer it that way. Mike K. P.S. - My images are almost exclusively slide film (alternative is digital, not negatives). Not liking grain is amplified due to images being stereo (3d) images.
Re: filmscanners: Re: So it's the bits?
On Fri, 12 Jan 2001 12:52:47 +1100 Julian Robinson ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: If they state an unqualified figure for Dmax, then when measured by some "reasonable" process it should meet that figure. With the likelihood that it will not, this would mean that they are just plain lying, and therefore should be open to action through consumer protection laws. I may be wrong, but isn't this a figure of merit that existed for drum scanners, even before there were scanners at all for consumers? I know that books compare this figure of merit for commercial drum scanners vs. home and office ones with this being one of the biggie differences. Further, I think it's a reasonable named spec, even if odd, when taking into account the name of a spec should be shorter than an explanatory paragraph. Talk about lawsuits over un-understandable technical gibberish by the mfgr (in U.S., consumers can't even understand how to work a punchcard ballot and will sue as a result). The spec spec's (AFAIK) resolution of density (whether linear or not...). The term "resolution" is already used (and has the similar faults: "input?", "output?", "optical?" etc.), so something else is needed to eliminate (ha!) confusion. :-) Although the spec dynamic-range/Dmax spec may be foo-foo'd by some here, I'll bet everyone here wants their scanner to have this number be high on their unit! I know I do. Mike K.
Re: filmscanners: Sprintscan 120 now on B+H web site ...
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: In a message dated 1/8/2001 11:55:37 PM EST, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: The 3.9 dynamic range sounds unbelievable. I wonder how they achieve that? 3.9 just means 13 bits of dynamic range. They're using a 14-bit A/D converter, which most vendors convert to a dynamic range of 4.2. I suspect Polaroid is just being conservative. One also can have a 14-bit A/D that's only 13 bits accurate (or have some other circuitry that distorts things or introduces noise that makes the LSB irrelevant). Mike K.
Re: filmscanners: RE: Film Scanners and what they see.
Laurie Solomon wrote: I am not sure that I understand what you are saying here or how it relates to my points. We are talking about the historical archiving of data across changing technological developments in digital media on which the data is I mean that I agree that having to change formats of archives will consume time and effort but that time spent will be offset by time saved by having the archive in the new/faster/easier/quicker format. This assumes that archive is ever used -- and at least philosophically, if it's not ever used, then who's to know the difference (could be an empty box and nobody'd know the difference). Mike K.
Re: filmscanners: RE: Film Scanners and what they see.
Laurie Solomon wrote: from that media; but the copying of the 20 CDR onto the new media in five years from the older media even at 40X still will take a fair amount of time even though it will be less time per CDR than it took to originally record the data on a 2X CDR. However if one has to continually recopy the same data over and over every 5 years with the development of new media and technologies (even granted an increase in speed and density) there is no lessening of time being spent archiving and maintaining a non-obsolete archive. But I do get your point and now have a clearer understand of what you were driving at. If the archive is actually used, rather than being purely an in-the-vault archive for back-room storage, then the speed/density of the new media would/should improve the search/access times for those times when being used, particularly if the new media was available "on-line", which is more likely the newer the media (for example: leave a CDROM in a CD-player vs. one of 400 floppies happening to be in the floppy-drive). So it might break even, or at least reduce the archiving-task "cost" in terms of time. Mike K.
Re: filmscanners: RE: Film Scanners and what they see.
Chris McBrien wrote: also the more images that we can store on a piece of media, the more 'we' are liable to loose should the media fail. I can just get one image from my FujiFilm MX2900 Zoom onto a 1.44MB floppy. It could be argued that I may just loose one image if a disc goes bad instead of say 400 if a CD becomes unreadable or God knows how many if a 22GB DVD switches on the 'Blue Screen of Death'. You bring up a good point. Digital storage is the "high-risk high-gain" option compared to the film/print "low-risk low-gain" option. Digital storage has the POTENTIAL to last forever, however to do so, it has to be actively preserved by changing formats during times of technology change and regenerating/copying on a regular basis. Even the "blue S.O.D." can be avoided by making multiple copies of the original (and they are *identical* copies, not degraded copies like with film). While on the other hand film/prints will not last forever. Period, that's it. They will decline in quality over time. At best the rate can be made very slow (in human terms). But in 1,000,000 years I doubt even one current painting, film, or print will exist, while digital images *could*, at least theoretically. Of course, one of the more pragmatic choices would be to do both. Use film for one's photos then scan them, keeping the originals after scanning. Maybe a mailing list could be formed for this approach. Oh? One like this list? Hm. Yes, good idea! :-) Mike K.
Re: filmscanners: RE: Film Scanners and what they see.
Rob Geraghty wrote: Mike wrote: Well, not really. The oversampling business in CD players is mostly a method to save as much as maybe a dime in their production costs to reduce the cost of the analog output reconstruction filter. Regardless of why they use a particular technique, the fact is that a filter *is* required on the output of the D/A to remove the harmonics which would otherwise degrade the quality of the output. Granted, a digital image is in the digital domain but when you display it - it a way you're creating a D/A process. I'm simply wondering whether filtering on the output would be useful. Presumably it's similar to people using gaussian blur to make the grain less ugly, but perhaps gaussian blur isn't the best way to do it. The equivalent (as such) of the reconstruction filter would be a kind of blurring that would eliminate being able to see the pixels. Mike K.
Re: filmscanners: Saving Scans
Chris McBrien wrote: David, I can't stress enough the need to create and organise folders and file names. I stores the images from my digital camera in the form of... 01-Garage,jpg 02-Cat.jpg et cetera This method does have the upper limit of 99 images, so if you're going to go above that on a regular basis, then add another leading zero to give a name of... 001-Garage.jpg FWIW - For digital camera photos, I use the program "PIE", or "digital PIE" that's a shareware program from someone in Germany if I recall correctly. Anyway, one of it's main features is that one can select all photos in a directory and auto-rename them with the date/time they were taken (using the data in the photo, NOT the date of the file). It supports various digital camera formats, including the Nikon 950 that I use (actually my wife's camera). It also does it in such a fashion that the files "sort" in time-order. So it doesn't index the contents (neither does the camera's numerical filenames), but a glance does tell exactly when the photo was taken. Mike K.
Re: filmscanners: RE: Film Scanners and what they see.
Austin Franklin wrote: Further, at least at first,the "oversampling" CD players were low end units That's not quite true, they were mid range units, and it was because the initial interpolation filters were quite bad, and were only 2x to 4x, and certainly did not meet the audio quality that was achievable without them. As to complexity, only in terms of the number of parts. Such filter designs are almost cookbook and are trivial to model in spice (a computer program for those who don't know) variants. Have YOU ever designed an output filter for a high end audio D/A not using an interpolation filter? I've been designing (and have a very high end analog engineer who designs) them for 20 years, and they are NOT trivial nor are they cookbook. They are in fact an art, and not many people can design them well. I stand corrected. My memory could swear that when they came out they were at the low end, and not at the high end. Note that I'm talking about the time when they came out and were the rage. Your comment about filters not being done very well is something I'd take to comfirm that they were low end players. But I defer to your more vivid recollection of the time. I only bought CD players back then (including the first model out, the CDP-101 as I recall, made by Sony). Mike K.
Re: filmscanners: RE: Film Scanners and what they see.
Austin Franklin wrote: The oversampling business in CD players is mostly a method to save as much as maybe a dime in their production costs to reduce the cost of the analog output reconstruction filter. Not quite. There is no oversampling in a CD player, it is interpolation. And it's not primarily money, it's quality. Output filters of the frequencies involved in CD reproduction, without using interpolation, end up being quite complicated, and their designs cause incoherent output. It is far easier to get coherent output from a higher frequency 1st order filter. My reference to "oversampling business" referred to what was being printed on the boxes and front covers of CD players. Further, at least at first,the "oversampling" CD players were low end units -- talking in real-world terms, they did it to save the dime (assuming sub-penny made in China parts). Yes a filter with steep skirts could tend to produce group-delay effects at the higher frequencies, but the only people who'd dare say they could tell the difference would be folk who wouldn't have a digital audio system to begin with (only mild sarcasm, mostly true :-). As to complexity, only in terms of the number of parts. Such filter designs are almost cookbook and are trivial to model in spice (a computer program for those who don't know) variants. There undoubtedly are programs that just spit out the circuit and values with parameters put in -- but that's not my field so it isn't what I use (I uses "spice" only rarely, my simulators are mostly digital-oriented). So I agree with all you say except for the leading "Not quite". CD players are mass-market consumer devices. Everything is to squeeze the last cent out of the production cost, and I mean that literally. Unfortunately, this also applies to scanners to film scanners to some extent, or strongly will be when they become US$ 49 USB devices sold at the local high volume sell-everything stores. Mike K.
Re: filmscanners: Film Scanners and what they see.
Tony Sleep wrote: Remember, aliasing is when two or more different input signals appear identical at the output of a sampled system. This only happens when the input signal exceeds the Nyquist limit of the sampled system. I've just twigged that you and others are only thinking in the frequency domain, without considering what happens to the luminance and colour components of high frequency info. No wonder this one has run and run... Carrying out the aliasing upstream, via a filter or defocussing, does not remove these - you input a blurry image which avoids the Nyquist limit, but pixel values will still be aliased, still be different to the original image. You've just done the integration of colour and luminance components in a different place. Not true. The aliasing has been eliminated. There is a loss from the original due to the non-infinite sampling caused by not having infinite pixel samples. The anti-aliasing filter just removes that which fundamentally cannot be reproduced accurately (see the equations and such that were rejected by some). Mike K.
Re: filmscanners: RE: Film Scanners and what they see.
Tony Sleep wrote: Exactly why one might use an anti-aliasing filter ahead of the CCD which I and others have mentioned (and which one person called "cheating" which it is, in the sense of the winner of a race "cheated" by running faster). It doesn't buy you any more information in your scan, all it does is attenuate the bad effects of losing it. It's 'cheating' in the same way that putting Vaseline on a UV filter might be claimed to cure a subject's acne. You can't accurately reproduce anything above that limited by the nyquist frequency. It's basic sampling theory that I was taught in the early 70's and still holds today. And the way to "fix" it isn't to attenuate the effects, it's to elimnate the cause, which is why the filter goes ahead of the sampling, not in the software afterwards, after the "damage" has already been done. In terms of what "we" can do, the answer is "nothing much". It's something for the scanner's designers to fix (and thay could at a cost). Mike K.
Re: filmscanners: RE: Film Scanners and what they see.
Rob Geraghty wrote: Mike wrote: Exactly why one might use an anti-aliasing filter ahead of the CCD which I and others have mentioned (and which one person called "cheating" which it is, in the sense of the winner of a race "cheated" by running faster). When I was reading something someone else wrote on this topic I couldn't help wondering about the kind of oversampling used in CD players to filter the output. I wonder if similar technology could be used to smooth the output from a scanner - maybe some scanners already do? Oversampling in a CD player just interpolates points to cheat the nyquist limit. Presumably in some way this is analogous to what "true fractals" does? Well, not really. The oversampling business in CD players is mostly a method to save as much as maybe a dime in their production costs to reduce the cost of the analog output reconstruction filter. The music recording (more analogous to our scanners) process already used an input anti-aliasing filter tuned to the particular sampling unit. Mike K.
Re: filmscanners: RE: Film Scanners and what they see.
"Shough, Dean" wrote: The optics in a scanner cause an image to be formed on the scanner's CCD. This image will have various aberrations and diffraction artifacts that cause the image to not be a faithful reproduction of the original piece of film. I'd call that things like "distortion", "non-linearities" and the like. The pixels in the CCD then measures this image. This measurement has two major components affecting this discussion, the sampling interval and the pixel's size/shape. The sampling interval determines the Nyquist limit for the scanner. For a 1200 dpi scanner, the Nyquist limit is 600 cycles per inch. Fourier sampling theorem states that if you have an image with no components (frequencies) above the Nyquist limit, then it is _possible_ to completely describe the image using samples of the image. Exactly why one might use an anti-aliasing filter ahead of the CCD which I and others have mentioned (and which one person called "cheating" which it is, in the sense of the winner of a race "cheated" by running faster). The scanner can't accurately reproduce the frequencies above the nyquist frequency so doing something to eliminate them isn't cheating, it's being realistic. If it can't be done (for fundamental physics sorts of reasons) don't try do it. :-) Once the CCD has detected the alaised signal, the only way to eliminate it is to filter it out. In the example above, we would have to remove all information in the image at 500 cpi, whether it was due to the alaised fence of a real fence whose image happened to occur at the same frequency. Without some a priori information about the scene we could not distinguish between them. True, which is why one would want an anti-aliasing filter in front of the CCD to eliminate the aliasing to begin with. :-) Thanks for the more complete explanation that I wouldn't have the patience to write. :-) Mike K.
Re: filmscanners: Film Scanners and what they see.
Tony Sleep wrote: Filtering is not aliasing. Agreed. But ... Furthermore, aliasing doesn't occur in the continuous domain. And that is where the effect I described occurs. It's a physical fact of CCD's, the mismatch between sub-Nyquist target detail and pixel size. The Nyquist limit is the filter, and aliasing is what results, in the scan. The inherent softness from a scanner has nothing to do with aliasing. It is simply regular, everyday, good old fashioned filtering from the CCD cell. The individual cell low pass filters the signal and the result is softness. It really isn't any more esoteric than that. Whatever happened to Occam's razor? You are needlessly multiplying entities here. For the purpose of analysis it is may be worthwhile to regard filtering and aliasing as separate, but in the CCD they are inseparable manifestations of the same thing: Nyquist. You can't have a CCD with any finite pixel size which doesn't filter and display aliasing artifacts in direct relation. If you can find a way, you'll be a very rich man. I'm rich I'm rich... maybe not. There aparently already are solutions, but perhaps just costs too much. Some digital cameras, for instance, have an optical filter ahead of the CCD as an input anti-aliasing filter. Like electrical anti-aliasing filters that I'm personally more familiar with, it eliminates the frequency components on the "other side" of the sampling frequency to eliminate that which to alias with. To my understanding (limited to reading a Kodak-technology article about how digital cameras were made in EDN magazine two or three years ago), it's essentially a "fuzz/blur" filter, but one that's real controlled and only "fuzzy" in the sense that detail finer than the CCD's resolution is fuzz'd. It was a separate glass component, and only in the higher end cameras. Whereas a scanner is essentially a digital camera with different mechanics Mike K.
Re: filmscanners: Second Hard Drive/Umax scanner
Rob Geraghty wrote: Bill Ross wrote: Just a thought - getting a small 10k rpm drive for current work plus a cheap large 5400 to park stuff might make for faster overall workflow at comparable price. From what I've seen, 7200rpm drives are cheap enough that it's hardly worth getting a 5400rpm drive. However as far as speed is concerned, the 16MB/s limit of IDE is the pain - even if an IDE drive is 10K rpm it can't do sustained transfers at over 16MB/s. That means (cache affects aside) a 30MB scan I thought that the UDMA/100 IDE interface was good for up to 100MB/s which according to reviews is much faster than the speed of the data coming off of the physical platters within the disk drives (and that even the older UDMA/66 is fast enough (66 MB/s) to be faster than the physical disk speed). I don't think "plain" IDE has been what drives have used for quite a few years. To get faster, I've read that one just needs to get faster (spin) disks with faster track access times to get the overall speed up, so it's not the IDE interface that's limiting factor, but the disk "underneath". Because high-end systems use SCSI, the high end fast-spin ( 7200 rpm) and fast access time disks ( 8ms )are SCSI ones. So for really fast speed one does need SCSI disks, but not because of the interface. There are some other theoretical advantages to SCSI in a multi-user server application but I don't know if they apply to the users in this newsgroup (not me anyway :-). Mike K. P.S - Magazines like P.C. Magazine has done benchmarking of servers using IDE vs SCSI disks, and I recall their conclusions to be that they were very surprised to find that it didn't make much difference in the actual system performance.
Re: filmscanners: Second Hard Drive
Rob Geraghty wrote: Price for an array: 2 x IBM 7200rpm 15GB drives + Promise RAID Controller total cost about US$330 I've been doing upgrades lately, and in addition to going to a 950Mhz Athlon T-bird, I paid an additional US$20 to get the RAID version of the ABIT KT-7 motherboard. It provides IDE RAID to which I connected two 30G Maxtor (sorry) 7200 RPM ATA/100 drives in striping mode (for speed) which gave me a very fast 60GB "virtual-physical" disk. The drives were about US$130 each for a total of US$280 for a very fast 60GB. It's a GREAT deal faster than the previous "ordinary" drive pre-upgrade. Mike K. Rob
Re: filmscanners: Re: monitors
Frank Paris wrote: The two horizontal lines on Trinitron monitors are intrinsic to the design and as far as I know will always be there. I know, it is a nuisance. I'm always mistaking them for a scratch on the film, for that's just about what Those lines are shadows of wires used to tension the grill (or something like that), so as I understand it, they'll pretty much stay there. Once I had a Sun branded 25" monitor at work (made by Sony I understand) and I think that huge tube had three wires as I recall. In any case, one doesn't notice them pretty soon after using it, and even then one usually could only notice them when looking for them on solid light (like white) backgrounds in normal use, or in really critical viewing. I really really liked that monitor. Mike K. P.S. - Changed jobs, just have a 19" non-trinitron monitor on my work 'pewter now. Home one is an older 21" non-trinitron (Philips) monitor, so I can't complain.
Re: 4000dpi (was film scanner mailing list)
Austin Franklin wrote: Giving people the impression that 1/8th or 1/15th second shutter speeds are advisable for sharp images is, if nothing else, not responsible advice. That's absurd. It's not an impression, it can be done with practice. No one said they are 'advisable', those are your words. I only said I do it routinely, and it can be done. I guess you believe that only the 'safest' methods should be aspired to...well, I don't settle for mediocre. I've been using SLR's for about thirty years as well. My current "main" camera is an RBT X3B which has two focal plane shutters flying vertically (superior for the type of camera it is). I've taken many an image with slow shutters (1/8, 1/15) that turned out sharp. Of course, many have turned out otherwise, but most of the time, they are adequately sharp. As said, it takes practice and only applies when the subject isn't moving excessively. That said, although the slow shutter speeds make an image of adequate sharpness, in my experience, HAD I used a tripod instead (or a higher shutter speed w/faster film) the result would have been even sharper. The ability to make even sharper results doesn't automatically disqualify the hand-held's as un-sharp. Just not as sharp as it could be. Just my experience. Back to scanning Mike K. P.S. - I've bought one of those cheap/small voice recorders to stick in my pocket to record technical and what-the-heck-is-it info for images. The filmscanners mailing list is hosted by http://www.halftone.co.uk To resign, mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] with UNSUBSCRIBE FILMSCANNERS in the title, or UNSUBSCRIBE FILMSCANNERS_DIGEST if you are reading the Digest.
