IT'S THAT TIME OF YEAR! ETC Computer Solutions is giving away a computer to the school that collects the most nonperishable items for the Fall Harvest food drive. Last year St. Anthony's won - who is it going to be this year?

PHOTOS AND FILM

You would think that film photography is nearly dead with all the digital cameras being sold these days. You don't want to get your expensive camera wet, (salt water is especially damaging to electronics), you might just grab a cheap disposable camera to catch those precious moments.

Making the Conversion

If you wish to save your prints digitally forever, then you have to convert those "analog" printed images to digital. Probably the hardest part of the conversion process is deciding which way to do it. You have several choices including commercial processing, flatbed scanner, or full-on film scanner.

Taking a Picture of the Picture

It might be tempting to just whip out your digital camera and take a picture of a photo print to get that digital image file, but you may be disappointed with the results. It's hard to get the focus just right, and you really need a copy stand to hold the camera at just the right spot so the image doesn't come out with a keystone effect. You have to be right over the center of the print to get it square. And the lighting as you take the picture will also affect the overall quality of the image.

Commercial Processing

The really easy way out is to have your film processor scan your film at the same time that you have it developed.

Flatbed Scanner

The entry level way to scan your photos is to use a flatbed scanner that is also useful for scanning pages out of books, magazines, or any sort of document. Some flatbed scanners can handle only photographic prints, while some higher-end scanners can actually retrieve an image out of a slide.

You may see cheaper scanners with very high output resolution, but it is often "interpolated resolution". They take a lower resolution sensor and calculate the average between two adjacent pixels to invent a new pixel in between. This sort of works once, but you will see bottom-end scanners where they have interpolated between the interpolations to produce an artificially high resolution specification. It's better to pay a bit more for a higher priced scanner that has true dots per inch resolution.

Film Scanner

If you are serious about turning chemical film images into digital scan files, then you are going to want a dedicated film scanner. These units are specialized for extracting the maximum quality image from film, and high-end models even have batch processing features that save you a ton of time. The other major advantage of film scanners is going directly from a film negative to a digital positive image.

Final Words

Digital photography is now the mainstream way of taking pictures for most of us geeks, though more film cameras are still sold around the world. It helps that film cameras can be incredibly cheap (as in disposable), and still take pretty decent photos. On occasions like trips to the beach, many of us prefer to tote a film camera instead of the nifty digital. Since film still dominates in the high-quality image department, being able to convert from film to digital is an important function to master. Using a good quality dedicated slide and film scanner capable of producing image files of super high resolution and a tonal scale that can't be captured any other way is the key to capturing and preserving those special prints and negatives.

Some content courtesy of Geeks.com

Rent this equipment for two days for $50.00. You can set up the projector yourself or we can assist you! Set up fees within the Quincy area are $25 or $50 for outlying areas. The projector may be rented for additional days. Call us for scheduling!

Thanks for your time, and don't forget to visit us at ETC Computer Solutions!