On Wednesday, February 17, 2021 at 11:06:59 AM UTC-5, wrote:
On Wed, 17 Feb 2021 07:06:48 -0800 (PST), -hh wrote:

Use a film/slide/dia scanner. Or just don't bother.

Having gone down that road, I'm going to disagree:

The touch labor involved in "doing it right" with a proper scanner means
that in most instances, it becomes a "don't bother" project.

As such, my advice is:

Step 1:
Use whatever "lousy" capture process you can that's fast & easy so that
at least a copy - no matter how crappy - actually gets accomplished.

Step 2:
Use this output to cherrypick what images are actually worth the effort of a high quality scan

Step 3:
Do (or pay for) the high quality scans on the cherrypicked subset

Scanning film-based images is unavoidably going to involve doing a lot
of work. Best done methodically and systematically.

Given that, my experience doing exactly this is that if you're going
to have to do a lot of work, it makes sense to only do it the once.

Sure, but it also depends extensively on what options one has for one's
specific circumstances.

For example, if one has slides already in carousels, so to view them
is merely to set up the projector and screen ... then add a dSLR on a
tripod aimed & focused at the screen and fire away!

Alternatively, if one is doing this with an family elder, run a video and
with each image, prompt them to talk about it, to identify where, or
who's in it ("Aunt Ethyl on the left"), etc.

Garbage-In, Garbage-Out, then do it right like you should have done it
in the first place isn't it for me. What use is a "crappy copy" to
man or beast? Or even hundreds -- thousands -- of "crappy copies"?

FWIW, I'm using hyperbola when I'm saying "crappy" he what I'm
really referring to is to obtain a technically suitable image, but one that's
not just the technologically maximum possible extracted that would
not be subject to any criticism by nospam for falling short of perfection:
this is intended to be a deliberate trade-off of quality for the benefit of
significantly reduce this phase's touch labor contribution.

Obviously, there has to be selection -- judgment -- about which images
are worth scanning, and which one's aren't. (Or, often which images
are worth scanning in order to keep a good/important part of an
otherwise faulty or lousy total image).

Yes, we cull images all the time. They're not all going to be winners,
and while its 'easy' to get rid of technically bad images, the problem
with legacy materials that aren't our own (ie, inherited) is that of those
that are technically acceptable, we don't necessarily know the context
of the individual images to understand if they're important enough to scan.


However, in my experience, that kind of judgment is best done during
the scanning process (given that the scanning process will generally
include an initial pre-scan before the scan proper). It's at that
point when one decides whether to go ahead with an image or to skip
it.

It really depends on just what scanning process is being used. If the
prep is labor intensive, then it makes sense to finish the effort with a
high quality / high resolution scan ... but I was referring more to there
being a less laborious alternative methods.

Doing twenty years' worth of pre-scans in the hope of then selecting
which ones to go back to again in order to do properly is both
inefficient and soul-destroying. You need to take a decision while
your engagement with the particular image is fresh, not months down
the road.

Exactly, and I'm already on my second film scanner that's been grossly
underutilized because my soul's already been crushed - twice - by the amount
of time it eats up to "do it right".

-hh