Forum: Modern Military Aircraft

To all

I have taken about 30 rolls of film with walk around photographs of F-16 b50 from Misawa and Super hornets and Hornets in Avalon Air Show and Aircraft Carriers Constellation and Kitty Hawk. Now, they were taken with 35 mm film and have developed them to standard size.

I would like scan them to share them with this site if possible. Can somebody help me as to what is the best way to do this. I have an A4 HP flat bed scanner and would like to know what settings are best to scan them to about 500 kb jpg format each.

I have seen images from an excellent aviation photography site http://www.sharpshooter-maj.com and am attaching a sample. I would like to achieve similar results.

Can anybody help me please?

F-16.net Sponsor

here is the photo

I've always had pretty good luck scanning at the greatest resolution the scanner will do and then working my way down to a size that's a good balance between file size restrictions and clarity of image. For photo-quality uploads to a discussion board like this one, 800x600 dpi is usually a good start. Most editing packages will scan at high resolutions then thru the magic of software will let you resize the image to fit your size restrictions. If you want the displayed pic to be near-photo-quality, render the image as a Windows Bitmap file (.bmp). Be aware though that bitmaps have large file sizes because little if any compression is used. For quick-loading, large thumbnail sized images, render it as a JPEG (.jpg). The JPEG image uses compression techniques that optimize file size but may lose image clarity when expanded to larger viewing sizes.

Good luck and we're anxious to see your pics! Very Happy

Thanks for the feedback.

Does it mean I just put the photograph on the glass, close the lid and save to
bmp? Do I need to enlarge the image first? Seems not. How do I know if the colours will look right on the screen.

I will start experimenting with the settings. Will let you know.

Usually you can't just save right to the bmp file, although I have been known to be wrong Wink

. You have to "wash" it thru some kind of editor first. The software that came with your scanner or whatever software package you use to edit images should let you set the scan resolution. Also reference the scanner's user's manual to see how to adjust scan rez. Set it for the highest setting and work your way down til you get to an acceptable file size but still have a good looking image (not grainy or pixelated). Once you get it color-balanced, cropped, etc., you can then export it to the file type you want (bmp, jpg, etc.). Once you have it saved, open the finished product as a new file with your image editor to see if it looks good enough to keep. You may need to do this a few times to see what rez setting works best.

Nothing beats Photoshop though. You should save to hi-res, low-compression jpg format though. BMP files are just too large.

Should I save to TIFF first at max resolution and then manipulate in photoshop and save to for example jpg.In a trial scan this way I ended up with a 5MB file. Seems I will need to spend a fair bit of time doing it.

I use JASC Paint Shop Pro. I scan at high resolution and save the initial scan as a bitmap. I then do all my editing/cropping/resizing etc as a bitmap so I don't lose any image quality, then finally save the image as a jpeg, usually at a compression setting of about 20.

A lot of deciding the final image size - both in pixels and in bytes - depends on what you want to do with it. If you are going to post the images here you want to end up with an image width of exactly 500 pixels to prevent any of the artifacts you saw in the image you posted above. If you are posting them on a website you want to try to keep the file size around 100 kB or less or it may load too slowly for many users (lots of factors to consider here). If you want super-detailed images that you will only store locally (on your HD or CD) then these factors don't come into play.

What about the colour balancing LinkF-16SimDude mentions? How do I know that the colours will be reproduced correctly without having to check 300 or so images? Will one setting fit all?

Most scanners will reproduce the same color balance as the photo you scanned. In other words, you are more likely to experience a balance problem in your original prints than in your scans. I frequently have to tweak RGBs or gamma when scanning prints.

Scanning lots film en masse with non-productive equipment is painful. Since you probably don't have a multi thousand dollar film scanner that scans negs ( uncut ) at the rate of about one roll every 5 minutes ( automated ) ,.... ( like where I work ) with 30 rolls you are going to be tired. Best to take it to a new photolab that has a digital printing system as opposed to an old analog one. Noritsu and Fuji have great equipment that does all this. Otherwise the quality of that photo you posted above is excellent and you are on the right track for sure.

If you only need to scan a few things, do it yourself, if you have a flatbed scanner with a backlight option with a film holder you are in good shape. A real film scanner would be better.... otherwise pay to have it done (scanned negs to CD) if you have a lot of it.

Then next time you decide to purchase a camera, get a digital one. Those same photo labs that have rapid film scanning built in also print right off of a disk to a high quality paper, fairly cheap.

Cool photos!

Forum: Modern Military Aircraft

Scanning aircraft photographs