Hello Everyone,
One of the rare occasions when I come out of lurk mode, and it is to ask for
the collective advice of the list ...
For some time (OK, a few years !) I have been playing with a Minolta Scan
Elite 5400 and a bunch of slides - some shot with my old OMs (obligatory OM
content !). I am using VueScan to scan the files as DNG, and then importing
them to Lightroom. Early tests had me weighing up file size vs image
quality. Scanning at full resolution and colour depth (5400dpi and 48-bit
RGB) produces file sizes of round 220 MB - so I settled on 2700dpi and
24-bit RGB, as this produced file sizes of around 20MB (about the same as
the DNG files from my e330).
My initial thoughts were that if I ever wanted to print something big, or
get a really good quality scan, I could always go back and scan that
particular slide or negative again at higher resolution. As time has
started to go on, however, I have worried more and more about this. I am
wondering if I should perhaps be getting every last drop of quality out of
the slides & negatives while I still can ? My concerns centre around:
1) The scanner won't last forever. Good scanners seem to be getting more
and more difficult to come by (I picked this one up 2nd hand, and that took
some searching).
2) I recently inherited a huge stash of slides from my Aunt and my Father
which I am going through and trying to scan and sort. Some of these are
invaluable family photos, and whilst some are in remarkably good condition
(some from the 60's look like they were taken yesterday !), some are showing
signs of age.
More recent tests (perhaps with a more critical eye, having gained more
experience) show that the 5400 dpi scans do hold a good amount more detail
(when zoomed in). More confusingly, the 48-bit RGB test scan has shown
considerably more sharpness than the 24-bit RGB scan. This last point
confuses me as I thought the bit depth was only concerning colour rendition
- not detail.
So the question really is, what do you guys do when scanning your precious
slides & negatives ? I would particularly welcome the thoughts of those
here who seem to spend or have spent a lot of time scanning - I'm thinking
of Tina and Ken particularly (probably because they are prolific posters !),
but I'm sure there are others.
Thanks for any help and advice - not sure quite where to go with this at the
moment.
Thanks,
Jon
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