[Leica] Some new Leica photos ... now: scanner dpi

[ricc at mindspring.com (Ric Carter)]

Jay--

The dpi thing can be a distraction.

Most of us (?) print only a small percentage of of the shots we take. 
Scanning all your negatives with enough resolution to print them to 
16X20 is not only a waste of storage and time, but approaches hubris.

I scan everything at about 1500-2000 pixels on the longest side and 
save it as a high quality JPEG. (Actually, Eckerds does most of them.) 
I dump these into iPhoto and tag them. They become an electronic 
contact sheet that can be searched. They are also sufficient to print 
8X10s for friends and family. I get a couple thousand images on a DVD 
in an iPhoto album. You can go even smaller if you print mostly 4X6s.

Let?s face it, the 35mm negative is a more efficient storage medium 
that digital media. When you decide you need a high quality print for 
publication or to hang over the sofa, you do another scan of the 
negative just for that print. You can easily find it because you filed 
it with your electronic contact sheet.

For quality printing, you need to know where you?re headed. I scan for 
about 300 dpi in the final output. In other words, if I?m printing to 
16 inches wide, I scan to 4800 pixels wide. I find that more than 300 
dpi in the final print is wasted. If I?m not sure of the final size, I 
scan for about 25 inches wide. This gives me more size than my printer 
will use (13X19 inches max). I archive the finished file, with all 
layers and adjustments. These can easily get in the 100-200 Meg range, 
but that will still get you a couple dozen full images on a DVD for 
posterity and save you doing repeating your work later for another 
print. For printing, I scale it down to the usable final.

Ric Carter
Garner, NC




On Apr 27, 2005, at 12:20 AM, lug-request@leica-users.org wrote:

> Subject: RE: [Leica] Some new Leica photos ... now: scanner dpi
> To: Leica Users Group <lug@leica-users.org>
> Message-ID: <20050427022049.36597.qmail@web20023.mail.yahoo.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
>
> Hi Jay,
>
> the gallery that I showed was all scanned at 4800dpi (9950F). This 
> helps in cropping, and also
> for the few half format pictures that I took. The grain I mentioned 
> earlier is not
> film grain, but scanner noise when slides are underexposed.
>
> Best Regards,
>
> Roland.
>
> --- Jay <bonvini@optonline.net> wrote:
>> This is definitely a newbie question - what res/dpi do you scan your 
>> 35mm
>> negs for maximum effectiveness?
>> File size is not an issue.
>>
>> Jay Ignaszewski
>