Dear All,

I am digitising a large photography archive, to be used in potential publications and exhibitions. The archive consists of several hundred black and white photographs taken in the 1940s-60s. I’m using the Epson V850 Pro flatbed scanner with either Epson Scan 2 or Silverfast SE Plus 8

Although I have access to the medium and large format negatives, my preference is to scan from the prints (which are mostly 8 x 10 inches). This preference is mainly due to the fact that the negatives are not all in good condition, and I would also like to capture the photographer’s darkroom adjustments.

I have scanned similar photographs over many years, usually opting for very high resolution scans, scanning at 2400 dpi and resulting in scanned image sizes of well over 1Gb. This is to make sure that when I print exhibition sized prints, up to 1 metre in size, I am getting the very best image quality possible from the original photographs.

However, the huge file size does dramatically slow down scanning and subsequent processing. It also means that the removal of dust and other marks requires much more work due to the increased resolution.

I have three questions relating to this:

1. Should I re-think my preference for scanning prints rather than negatives? Would I obtain a better technical quality from the negatives?

2. Am I scanning the images at an unnecessarily high resolution? What would be the optimum quality vs size compromise?

3. If scanning from prints, is there any particular advantage in using Silverfast over the Epson Scan software? Would I obtain a better dynamic range in the shadows or highlights in Silverfast?

I’d be very interested and grateful to hear the various opinions of the experienced users on this list.

Thanks and best wishes,

Richard