Thread: Film Scanners
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Old February 7th 05, 04:17 PM
All Things Mopar
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Robert Feinman commented courteously ...

The rule-of-thumb is to take the dpi of the scanner and
divide by 300 to get the degree of enlargement you can
expect with best quality for prints.


I'd go with 200 unless you plan gigantic prints. And, the
old photographer's rule for viewing distance comes into
play. Call me a fool, but I've got plenty of 8.5 x 11, 11
x 17, and 13 x 19 pictures printed on glossy paper with
PPIs as low as 125 (for 8.5 x 11) or even 60 for the big
guys.

I don't let people put their nose up against my pictures.
They can view the 8.5's at a foot or two, but I display my
"gallery" of large prints (I have an HP DEskjet 1220C
wide-carriage printer) in a way that people can't get much
close than 4-5 feet. Natually, if you look at any of my
prints up close, they look ghastly! Fuzziness and severe
pixelations are a fact of life at those low PPIs.

And, you can only expect improvement up to the visual
information in the original. In a very good 35mm
KodaChrome, I've gotten good results with a dedicated
scanner at 2600 DPI, then resized down. Less-than-perfect
slides and/or slides taken with a less-than-optimum camera
may not be able to withstand DPIs about about 1200.

Unfortunately, in my case, the scanner turned out to be
crap. It's sharp enough but brightness/contrast, color
balance, and color saturation are just dismal. Lots of
post-process time in PSP to fix them...

You can also read the scanning discussions in the tips
section of my web site as well


I may not be the sharpest tool in the box when it comes to
scanning, but 12 years experience makes be at least fair.
But, I am always on the lookout for new tips to augment my
skills.

I'm sure I missed it - what's your web site URL? Thanks.

--
ATM, aka Jerry