Message text written by Mike Cowham. >I agree, scanned prints were not too good, but I could 'cheat' with Paintshop Pro and improve them somewhat. Films onto CD were better but the very best were from digital cameras. However, I did compare shots taken by different two cameras. Where we photographed the same subject a comparison was possible. The other camera actually gave better resolution, and this was only a 2 megapixel cheap camera! I think that the reason for this could be either the auto-focus or the lens. <
The issue here is, I think, the perceived quality of the image to a human observer. As another contributor has pointed out the issues are complex and they include the lens as well as the recording medium. As the Registrar of the BSS I see the whole gamut of photographic quality when looking at dial images. Some photographs may be poorly taken close up with an APS camera - maybe even with camera shake, others may be taken from far away with an excellent camera and using a tripod and there some in each of the same extremes taken with digital cameras of varying quality. Of course there are always several (but sadly nowhere yet near the majority) taken close up with an excellent camera of either type. These latter are always and clearly the best. As I see it the scanner, whilst certainly an 'interfering element', is most certainly not the villain of the piece. Many modern scanners have attachments to enable them to scan tranparencies at 2000 dpi or higher and the results even of that are commendable. I do not think that the scanner is the cause of the problem. Given equal input quality I personally don't notice much difference between a properly scanned analogue image and a digital camera image. However, there is nothing yet to beat the high quality print from a good (optical) camera using film of 35mm or greater. These images can be enlarged many times whereas a factor of four is the best I have so far been able to _use_ (and then only twice in five years and then from a 4-6MPxl camera!) - and usually it is a factor 1.5 - from ordinary digital camera images. My current view is that unless a digital camera is one of the increasing range of SLR digital cameras that support the range of high quality lenses and other features, then the quality of image will not be as good as that from a good analogue SLR. The trouble is that these high quality digital SLR cameras are currently VERY expensive; often (here in the UK) starting at 1,000 pounds and sometimes (as with the 'Contax N Digital') rising to 6000 pounds(!) but even that model can only take one full resolution image (12MB) every 12 secs. There is another problem that is not often mentioned and that is the quality of the 'home produced' image from a digital camera. With fairly rare exceptions these are nothing short of dreadful and, worse than that, the images are not as permanent as the printer manufacturers would have us believe. Few if any 'home produced' prints are suitable for submission to a 'High Resolution Archive'. I have an Epson printer and their inks are said to be very stable (10 years appears in the literature frequently) My experience is that changes can be often be seen in 6 months even when they are held in low light conditions. The message is clear. If you are submitting an image from a digital camera for archive purposes, first get it printed by a photographic laboratory directly from your memory card onto conventional photographic paper. Do not do it at home. Of course, digital imaging is convenient and it is now easy to send in reports and images via e-mail. However. for all the reasons above BSS do not accept reports and images of dial sightings by e-mail. The Society just has neither the time nor the resources (incl the computer storage and retrieval facilities available to Members) to acquire, store and produce, adequate quality archive records from them. The day of the digital camera will certainly come and societies like BSS and NASS will have to move to accommodate it. Currently we in the BSS are somewhere in between! At the moment the BSS 'High Resolution Archive' remains film-photograph based. We also maintain a Low Resolution (digital) archive with the images being stored on the database (usually showing only the dial itself and then at a maximum JPEG size of around 500kB per image using a level of compression that causes no significant deterioration. . It is from this database that the thumbnail images in our printed Register are generated. These images sometimes come from a digital camera or more frequently from a scan of the photograph sent in by one of our recorders. I would be very interested to hear comments from anyone who might also be responsible for image archiving and who might have similar problems planning the transition from analogue to digital archival storage. Patrick ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Forwarding addresses: E-Mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Web: http://www.dunelm.org.uk/homepages?patrick_powers Lat: N 51d. 49m. 09s: Long: W 00d. 21m. 53s -
