Scanning old photos question.

David G. Smith

David G. Smith

Steak Knife Member
I want to scan some old photos of my family into my computer for archiving and sharing purposes and I have some questions.
What format should I scan to? My scanner gives me the choice of JPEG, BMP, PNG or TIF. Which one should I use.

Also,at what resolution should I scan the images at? My scanner gives me choices in select DPI settings. It looks like 600 DPI is a manageable size. Should I go lower or higher, and if so, Why? I may want to print some of the photos out, as blow ups, so I guess that if I do that, I should go to a DPI for those photos, correct?

Any other advice would be helpful.

Thanks
 
There isn't any visual downside to any one of these formats. BMPs, PNGs and TIFs have a larger file size but they are uncompressed so you can edit and save as many times as you want without a generational loss in compression. JPEG is much smaller file size and is good for most purposes. If you choose JPEG make sure you save at a JPEG 12 which is maximum quality.

The below is assuming the photos you are scanning at in good focus, sharp and don't have motion blur:

If you are scanning prints from color negative then you can resolve about 300DPI from your prints if you are scanning B&W prints especially ones from higher quality papers such as fiber paper, you can get closer to teh 400DPI range. Your scanner undoubtedly has the ability to scan at much higher native resolutions (some resolutions are not true scanning resolutions but rather interpolated resolutions) but when scanning prints it won't benefit you to scan at anything higher than 300-400DPI since that’s the amount that the original print had resolved in the first place. Anything above this and you will just be scanning in grain and the paper itself at a higher resolution and won't offer your final image any benefit. The ideal option is to get a high quality drum scanner and scan the original negatives at a very high DPI.

When you go a reprint your scan, the most modern day printers can resolve is around 300DPI so you won't want to print much larger than the original size of the print that was scanned in the first place. If you want good quality positive or negative scans, Costco offers a high quality service for a fair price last time I checked.
 
The advice of egproductions is all correct. For archiving photos I tend to scan to JPG, 80% quality at least and minimum 1200 px wide, "sharpen color edges" option selected (this is in Adobe Firewoks). But for something really special i do it bigger, so that I'll be able to make prints of it one day.
 
egproductions said:
The ideal option is to get a high quality drum scanner and scan the original negatives at a very high DPI.
Click to expand...

Very high in this case means something that gives about 8 MPix resolution form 35 mm neg/slide. There really is not more data in there, no matter what some film enthusiasts claim (except maybe KodaChrome 25 shot with the best primes). That means about 3600 pixels wide, maximum. The ideal way would be to scan them to TIFF, make the necessary adjustments and then save as high quality JPG.
 
No really need to get into this anymore (film, what is it?), but I have seen many reliable posts/opinions/views with the basic finding that 35mm film has 8 to 12 MPix resolution depending on stock. Also the tests done with the first 16 MPix Canon EOS-1Ds found out that the resolution was equal to 4.5x6 midframe 100 ASA slide. In my own test I found out that even the early EOS-1D at 4.7 MPix was as sharp as 100 ASA Astia shot with the same lens (24-70 f2.8 Canon zoom with the same framing in this case). So that was the end of my belief that 35mm film is sharp: it is not compared to any decent 10+ MPix DSLR. End of story.
 
I don't shoot film I shoot digital. I have no need to shoot film, since most photography I do requires the convenience of digital. I also can't afford a film scanner that would surpass the quality of a digital camera and since I don't have a darkroom and I'm not good enough of a photographer to shoot a photo without the need to retouch anything the majority of the time, It would be pointless for me to be shooting film.

That being said, film still has a edge quality wise especially if you know what your doing. That's why landscape photographers that demand tons of detail are still shooting large format film. Not only can you get more resolution out of a negative as compared to the same size digital sensor but there are other benefits such as detail where a digital camera might have NR or a bayer interpolation and dynamic range especially with B&W film stocks.

DSLRs are only now starting to get close in terms of resolution as compared to 35mm negatives. You can get about 25MP out of a well exposed/shot negative on good film stock. you can get 12MP with ease. Also something to consider is that negatives are future proof. Your beastly 21MP digital camera today is going to look like whimpy toy in 10 years from now but your 35mm negatives can be scanned in 10 years achieving much better results than you can with todays scanners. This is the reason you can't conconclusivly test resolution comparisons by scanning in some film. You have to visually compare a direct print from a 35mm negative to a digital print.

There isn't much benefit by shooting film in terms of quality but it's there if quality truly is your priority.
 
Actually new large format sensors (bit smaller than 4.5x6) resolve as good or better than 4x5 film. For all out landscapes 8x10 or larger film is naturally better than any sensor, but if we compare same size sensor and film (like 35mm FF sensor with 35 mm film or mid-size sensors to 6x6) sensors have already surpassed film by considerable margin. Now the bottleneck is lens diffraction, not sensor sharpness.
 
Looks like we are going round in circles. I still believe you are underestimating how much resolution you can get out of a negative. Even drum scanners limit the potential of a negative. The best way to test is to make a direct print from the negative itself.

There is a reason that most of hollywood is still shooting film. they are going to be able to rescan a film and get much more out of it in 25 years from now while digital stuff is stuck in the 2010's

I'm not sure what you mean by new large format sensors. Do you have a specific one in mind? Large format digital cameras can either have a cropped medium format digital back mounted to them or they use scanning backs that take a minute like a flatbed scanner. Even if you couldn't get more out of large format negatives as compared to same size digital it's not a realisitic option for most medium and large format photographers. Digital only makes sense when you take thousands of photos a week/month. The price point makes a lot of sense for DSLRs but when you start talking about medium format or large format cameras the price point for digital is so high that unless you shoot thousands of images every week it probably doesn't make sense.

lens diffraction has always been a limiting factor with film. Its true that part of the reason it doesn't make sense to cram 12 MP into a point and shoot is that diffraction is going to limit the photographer when the aperture is hardly stopped down, however, the limiting factor is higher as you have a larger film plane. DSLRs have enough resolution that lens diffraction limits them but film is also limited by lens diffraction just the same. This is always going to be a real world constant, the question is when you use your lenses properly, which medium is going to give you more detail.
 
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