[MacDV] Re: Film Scanners

[Danny Grizzle]

On 12/30/02 3:17 AM, "Gregg Gorrie" <ggorrie at telus.net> wrote:

> My advice - take them to a service bureau that does Kodak Photo CD/Picture
> CDs and spend your time/money on the creative side of things.

Outstanding advice, and the real bottom-line behind my long winded
exposition on scanning still images. If you don't know what you are doing
(and - assumptions aside - you don't, unless you've had specialized
training), then most users would be well advised to farm this task out. It
might expensive, but go the other route, and you will look back to realize
how cheap the "pro" option really is.

Scanners are mainly a convenience option, when you need something instantly
during the course of an edit session. That's my perspective -- other advice
and techniques offered in this thread are laughably amateurish, suitable
only for home movies with non-existent standards of quality.

One detail: Kodak Photo CD and Kodak Picture CD are *completely* different
products. For quality, choose Photo CD.

Picture CD is a newer, low-budget offering with relatively low-res scans.
"Low budget" usually translates into higher margins for photofinishers, not
lower costs for you. Shop around - true high-res Photo CD is not much more
expensive, if anything, though you may have to look past Wal-Mart and
Eckerd's for the service. Lowest price will probably be on the Internet, not
a local photofinisher. I've seen a huge range of prices - it pays to shop
this, for sure on price and maybe on quality between various vendors.

Don't count on retail clerks to know the difference between Photo CD and
Picture CD. Few photofinishers do this work on premises. You might try a
test with a small number of slides/negatives, just to confirm what you will
get for your money. The CD-R discs returned from the lab should be clearly
marked, either Photo CD or Picture CD.

Danny Grizzle