From the Ingear section of today’s Sunday Times:-
“As with any digital advance, for every step forward by one company, there are dozens of smaller web outfits eager to enhance and customise the function. Historypin for example is a British partnership with Google that allows users to upload old photos of streets and buildings to create what it describes as a ‘digital time machine’. Call up a modern Street View shot and you can click on a building and drill down through its history, as seen in archive photographs enhanced by text reminisences from the people who worked in them.”
Sunday, May 30, 2010
Thursday, May 27, 2010
Welcome
Today we welcomed a new member of our photo scanning team - a new Coolscan scanner.
We need this for several reasons. First, it will help us keep pace with growing business volumes. Second, it adds to our ability to keep scanning slides and negatives should one of the other units fail. Finally Nikon aren’t making any more dedicated 35mm scanners so the chance to acquire one is hard to pass up.
We need this for several reasons. First, it will help us keep pace with growing business volumes. Second, it adds to our ability to keep scanning slides and negatives should one of the other units fail. Finally Nikon aren’t making any more dedicated 35mm scanners so the chance to acquire one is hard to pass up.
Friday, May 14, 2010
Tiff? JPG?
Simple question - when we can scan photos into either file format, why go for one rather than the other? And this applies to photo scanning, slide scanning in 35mm and medium format.
Let’s get rid of one of the “old wives tales” of photo scanning, that saving a file as a jpg ruins its quality. Well that may or may not have been true a few years ago but I don’t think anyone seriously worries about that now.
The main benefit of jpg files is that they are very much smaller. That can make a very big difference in the time it takes to open or edit a photo. Bigger files rapidly eat up CDs, DVDs or hard drives. Even with a powerful modern PC manipulating a TIFF image from, say a medium format negative, can be a significant task. Maybe OK if you’re just editing one image but suppose we scan 100 or more?
For the vast majority of not only our clients but scanning service users and photographers in general I’d say jpg is more than adequate. If you plan to do heavy editing and you have access to lots of computing horse power TIFF may be the option.
Let’s get rid of one of the “old wives tales” of photo scanning, that saving a file as a jpg ruins its quality. Well that may or may not have been true a few years ago but I don’t think anyone seriously worries about that now.
The main benefit of jpg files is that they are very much smaller. That can make a very big difference in the time it takes to open or edit a photo. Bigger files rapidly eat up CDs, DVDs or hard drives. Even with a powerful modern PC manipulating a TIFF image from, say a medium format negative, can be a significant task. Maybe OK if you’re just editing one image but suppose we scan 100 or more?
For the vast majority of not only our clients but scanning service users and photographers in general I’d say jpg is more than adequate. If you plan to do heavy editing and you have access to lots of computing horse power TIFF may be the option.
Sunday, May 9, 2010
Hi8 to DVD Conversion
Fateful thing to say, as I did on Friday, “Haven’t seen many Hi8 tapes lately”. Just as well as our global HQ is presently stuffed with VHS tapes we’ve been converting. Two of the biggest tape to DVD conversion projects we’ve taken on.
To answer me we got a batch of Hi8 tapes in the post on Saturday morning, at least the postman was amused to get me out of bed before 08:00. Then on Sunday, thankfully in the afternoon, two calls just to check we’re still converting Hi8 to DVD. Yes, we are.
The other question asked was about taking the converted DVD containing the footage we’ve converted, and then turning that into a computer editable file. Yes, you can do this and you can download free software for either PCs or Macs that will do it for you. We recommend Handbrake, give it a try.
For our own purposes we use paid for software from Xilisoft. They have a gigantic range of PC, Mac software to rip DVDs into files ready to edit or play on virtually any platform including iPods and iPhones. One advantage of Xilisofts offerings is the catch-all term ease of use. Once you’ve got the hang of it you can quickly configure their code to rip DVDs into any format. Then there’s the elapsed time taken to convert a video. A two hour home movie tape can take up to 11 hours to convert if you use Handbrake on a less than modern PC. Even our multicore PCs struggle to get significantly under the 120 minute mark with Xilisoft but my gut feel is its around twice as fast as Handbrake. For us time is money, so Xilisoft got the vote.
If you’re thinking of ringing today yes, we’re still converting Hi8 to DVD, along with MiniDV, VHS-C and ordinary VHS.
To answer me we got a batch of Hi8 tapes in the post on Saturday morning, at least the postman was amused to get me out of bed before 08:00. Then on Sunday, thankfully in the afternoon, two calls just to check we’re still converting Hi8 to DVD. Yes, we are.
The other question asked was about taking the converted DVD containing the footage we’ve converted, and then turning that into a computer editable file. Yes, you can do this and you can download free software for either PCs or Macs that will do it for you. We recommend Handbrake, give it a try.
For our own purposes we use paid for software from Xilisoft. They have a gigantic range of PC, Mac software to rip DVDs into files ready to edit or play on virtually any platform including iPods and iPhones. One advantage of Xilisofts offerings is the catch-all term ease of use. Once you’ve got the hang of it you can quickly configure their code to rip DVDs into any format. Then there’s the elapsed time taken to convert a video. A two hour home movie tape can take up to 11 hours to convert if you use Handbrake on a less than modern PC. Even our multicore PCs struggle to get significantly under the 120 minute mark with Xilisoft but my gut feel is its around twice as fast as Handbrake. For us time is money, so Xilisoft got the vote.
If you’re thinking of ringing today yes, we’re still converting Hi8 to DVD, along with MiniDV, VHS-C and ordinary VHS.
Thursday, May 6, 2010
Which scanner?
We buy a lot of our equipment through Amazon. It’s the first place I look, not just when buying books but for computer kit too. They won my loyalty for life a couple of years ago when they were endlessly patient with the useless Nikon APS adaptors which shred their gears after one or two rolls of film.
I’ve bought a couple of scanners from them so every so often I get marketing emails telling me which scanners are popular. In fact I got one this morning, so which scanners are popular?
From the top ten six aren’t really scanners, they’re these multi function printers with a scanner tagged ontop. primarily aimed at document scanning they’re easy to sneer at from a “pro scanner” view point. Actually, they produce more than acceptable results. Every so often I read of someone asking how they can scan negatives or slides on one. The short answer is you can’t, to scan slides or negatives you need a light source above the target, which is not how these units operate. Simple photo scanning and they’ll be fine.
Two manufacturers take the other positions - Canon and Epson. Both manufacture what I’d call “serious” scanners but their top end scanners don’t appear in the listings. However the popular units do have the additional light source which will enable you to scan slides and negatives. If you look at the raw specs of these units you’ll get a pretty decent scanner at a modest price.
Why pay more? Well there’s the obvious of getting a higher quality image but beyond that there are two features worth investing in. Speed is the first, you’ll be amazed how long it takes to scan a collection of 35mm negatives or 35mm slides so it makes a big difference if you can do 8, 12 or more in a single batch. Second, the technology that automatically removes dust and scratches which will save you hours and hours in post processing. Epson use Kodak’s Digital ICE while Canon have their own alternative called FARE.
I’ve bought a couple of scanners from them so every so often I get marketing emails telling me which scanners are popular. In fact I got one this morning, so which scanners are popular?
From the top ten six aren’t really scanners, they’re these multi function printers with a scanner tagged ontop. primarily aimed at document scanning they’re easy to sneer at from a “pro scanner” view point. Actually, they produce more than acceptable results. Every so often I read of someone asking how they can scan negatives or slides on one. The short answer is you can’t, to scan slides or negatives you need a light source above the target, which is not how these units operate. Simple photo scanning and they’ll be fine.
Two manufacturers take the other positions - Canon and Epson. Both manufacture what I’d call “serious” scanners but their top end scanners don’t appear in the listings. However the popular units do have the additional light source which will enable you to scan slides and negatives. If you look at the raw specs of these units you’ll get a pretty decent scanner at a modest price.
Why pay more? Well there’s the obvious of getting a higher quality image but beyond that there are two features worth investing in. Speed is the first, you’ll be amazed how long it takes to scan a collection of 35mm negatives or 35mm slides so it makes a big difference if you can do 8, 12 or more in a single batch. Second, the technology that automatically removes dust and scratches which will save you hours and hours in post processing. Epson use Kodak’s Digital ICE while Canon have their own alternative called FARE.
Wednesday, May 5, 2010
Photo Scanning Volumes
We get asked all sorts of questions, no problem with that, photo scanning is not something everyone knows much about. But whether it’s really basic (“Can you scan colour and black & white?”) or up to the highly technical (“How do you set a black point?”) one of the most frequent areas of questioning is how many photos can you scan?
At the moment we have a major job on, we’re scanning a family archive for a large family whose fortunes have left them dispersed around the world. We’ve done thousands of slides and negatives, just at the end of last week we started on the prints.
Anyone who has thought about scanning will tell you prints are the worst. Negatives and slides can often be batched up so you can do a strip, a batch of slides or maybe even a whole film roll in one session. But photos are often seen as a one at a time exercise. Yes, if you do that yourself you’ll quite possibly never get to the last photo album.
Thankfully we have a high speed photo scanner in the shape of Kodak’s s1220. Not only does it do a great job (specially in restoring faded colours) it scans very, very quickly.
So next time someone asks me how many we can do in a day I can tell them we did nearly 4,000 yesterday. We could have done more, but 4,000 high quality photo scans isn’t a bad days work.
At the moment we have a major job on, we’re scanning a family archive for a large family whose fortunes have left them dispersed around the world. We’ve done thousands of slides and negatives, just at the end of last week we started on the prints.
Anyone who has thought about scanning will tell you prints are the worst. Negatives and slides can often be batched up so you can do a strip, a batch of slides or maybe even a whole film roll in one session. But photos are often seen as a one at a time exercise. Yes, if you do that yourself you’ll quite possibly never get to the last photo album.
Thankfully we have a high speed photo scanner in the shape of Kodak’s s1220. Not only does it do a great job (specially in restoring faded colours) it scans very, very quickly.
So next time someone asks me how many we can do in a day I can tell them we did nearly 4,000 yesterday. We could have done more, but 4,000 high quality photo scans isn’t a bad days work.
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