Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 1997/03/22

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Subject: Re: scanner "policy" ?
From: Godfrey DiGiorgi <ramarren@bayarea.net>
Date: Sat, 22 Mar 97 12:01:06 -0800

>Just exactly what is the LUG policy re scanned images?

I'm not sure what you mean by the "LUG policy" re scanned images. 

I have shifted about 95% of my once darkroom work to film and flatbed 
scanners and my computer. The chemical, wet portion of my photography is 
almost exclusively negative production now, although I still do 
enlargements for subminiature format (Minox 9.5mm) because that negative 
is too small to scan effectively with a 2700dpi film scanner. 

I use a Polaroid SprintScan 35E/S film scanner for 35mm negs and an Apple 
Color OneScanner 600/27 for print scanning. I use various photo editing 
software tools to adjust tonal scale, exposure balance, etc on my images. 
I output the images either to a high quality color inkjet printer, 
computer viewable image formats; I can also send them to a service bureau 
to have large format negatives made with a film recorder and large format 
prints with a dye sublimation printer (or other high quality hardcopy 
output device). 

The cost of the whole system, end to end, is approximately $4500. The 
flatbed scanner is a 600dpi optical resolution unit, 9bit/color sampling, 
24bit color image output and cost about $390. The film scanner is a 
2700dpi optical resolution unit, 10 bit/color sampling, 24 bit output, 
and cost about $1500. The computer is an older Macintosh PowerPC model 
with 56MB of RAM and 2.2GB of available storage space, a faster current 
system setup similarly would cost about $2000 or so.

This system provides an amateur like me a very usable photographic 
workstation, allows me to get excellent use of my investment in cameras, 
demonstrates to me that the ultimate quality of the images is not 
strictly bounded by the tools for what I'm after. A professional, 
prepress grade system would require higher resolution scanning and output 
devices and a more powerful computer, allowing more productivity and a 
little more capability.

Some pictures from my first efforts with this system are available for 
viewing on my website.

Godfrey
 http://www.bayarea.net/~ramarren - use the personal photography link