Anyone want to post a really great large format scan?

[Richard Mahoney]

Hello Paul,

There have been discussions lately about the ultimate potential of one kind of photographic capture over another. I've scanned a lot of film, but never with a high end scanner ... all of mine has been for small black and white prints, well served by wet mounting on desktop scanners.

I'd love to see examples of the best of what's possible.

Anyone have a scan to share? Throw on an ugly water mark if you're worried about anyone stealing the image.

I'm attaching a small 1:1 crop of one of my 300 ppi A0 scans from 4x5 Astia together with a small version of the whole image. This was made by Andrew Budd -- the fellow I always use -- on his Fuji Celsis 6250 (Crosfield). You always hear people going on about detail and all that with good drum scans. For me the main advantage -- and you can see this even with smaller scans and prints -- is the tonality, and then there is the reach into the darkness.

Wood's Mill, Addington, New Zealand :: Ironbark Post and Beam








Best, Richard

[Light Guru]

Where did Paul say we wanted a "file viewable on a web page"? His request was "I'd love to see examples of the best of what's possible". That's easily achieved by making the file available via download - where the file can then be viewed in Photoshop.

Hi did not, it was others who first brought up posting it online.

[paulr]

Richard, thank you very much, that's helpful. What resolution is the original scan?

Zak, Sergey, what's with the bizarre suspicion? I'm asking for samples of what people consider excellent scans. I know people in this community have such scans because they talk about them. If you think that I'm not really interested because my first choice isn't paying someone $130 per negative for their service, then go piss off.

If you don't have anything to share, find another conversation.

[John NYC]

For goodness sakes. I just downloaded a 365MB file this morning. The whole time i was still surfing the web in another process window. Also modern browsers will load huge files and scale them down and you can right click to save. But the easiest way is just to provide a download link the user can click on and save to their drive to open the file in their editor of choice without burdening the browser to first show te file. This is just not a hard problem to solve here in 2013.

[tigger_six]

It's not just your Internet connection that is part of the equation. It also has to do with Internet connection of the server its hosted on.

The file size could easily be 1GB or more.

Send me your 1GB file and I'll happily host it on my website, I'm sure many others wouldn't have a problem either. Or you could just upload it to a plethora of file sharing services. It's 2013, not 1993. Downloading a 1GB file wouldn't take me more than 2 minutes, I can survive that.

Furthermore, a 4x5 4000dpi jpeg with very low compression that doesn't lose any detail (~95) would be only roughly 60MB large. Even if it was scanned at 8000dpi, it would be only 240MB. Even when served directly, it is no problem for a web browser to show it, it might lag a few seconds, but most computers today have way more memory than the ~1.2GB it needs to store the image as a bitmap.

No elves that run the Internet will be hurt in the process.

[paulr]

Furthermore, a 4x5 4000dpi jpeg with very low compression that doesn't lose any detail (~95) would be only roughly 60MB large. Even if it was scanned at 8000dpi, it would be only 240MB. Even when served directly, it is no problem for a web browser to show it, it might lag a few seconds, but most computers today have way more memory than the ~1.2GB it needs to store the image as a bitmap.

No elves that run the Internet will be hurt in the process.

Precisely.
And I'm not on the best of terms with those elves anyhow.

[Corran]

Geez, what a bunch of drivel. The web destroys the quality? Pfft, whatever.

Paul - I'd be happy to have the image I posted HERE hosted and downloadable by anyone, full resolution. At 2500DPI, it is almost 400 megapixels. It's of x-ray film, so it's at a disadvantage but it's an 8x10, so I think it evens out. If anything the grain is a bit more present in the high values compared to a modern T-grain film. I can't host it on my site because I have download limits, and I don't push these kind of huge files around usually, so if someone wants to host it that would help.

It's from my new Screen Cezanne. Not a drumscan, but still quite a good scanner!

[Richard Mahoney]

Hello Paul,

Richard, thank you very much, that's helpful. What resolution is the original scan?

As usual I had the transparency scanned at 12px/mm (a little over 300ppi) at the size it was to be printed (about A0). Primary sharpening was by the Fuji Celsis 6250 -- better than post with Photoshop or some such. File sizes always vary depending on the amount of info in the transparency but I think this one was close to 500MB. When i comes to drum scanning for pre-press we never think in terms of file size. Its always 12px/mm targeted at a little over final printing size.


Best, Richard

[paulr]

Bryan, thanks so much. I PM'd my ftp info.

Richard, what was the final print size?

[John NYC]

Bryan, thanks so much. I PM'd my ftp info.

Richard, what was the final print size?

A0 paper is 33.1 in × 46.8 in