New guy with questions!

[aad]

Hello all! I've been lurking on this forum since I got my first rangefinder camera-a Leica iiif with 50-3.5 Elmar, and now all I do is play with my camera and read this forum (well, it seems that way).

Anyway, while I've found a lot of subjects that I'll be spending time and money on (lenses, for one)I think I'll start with one that I can use while the rain pours down. Having a new camera these days means I had to buy a scanner -but what resolution are people here using for scanning? I have way too many choices.

My intent is to try out the online printing services. I want a decent result if I order an 8x10, but don't want to ship 20MB files and have everyone laugh at my museum quality pictures of long-dead pets.

Thanks for your help and patience. I hope my lens questions will be more interesting.

Aaron

 

[JoeFriday]

welcome to the club, Aaron

first of all, the beauty about online print services is that you don't know they're laughing at your photos 🙂 so don't worry about it

the standard rule is to have your final image resolution of 300dpi at the actual print size.. that's how magazines have been doing it for decades.. anything higher than that is unnecessary, but keep in mind that it's better to have too high a resolution than too low

 

[back alley]

hi aaron and welcome.

for posting to the internet a resolution of 72 is fine.

my lab wants files saved at 300 for printing and it sure seems to work for them
i save as a tiff file (for printing) and email the file to the lab and pick up my print the next day.

joe

 

[aad]

Thanks! My scanning software allows me to specify a destination size as well as resolution in DPI. Do I put in my intended print size?

And what advantage is there in TIFF vs. JPEG? ManI wish I had a good photo lab nearby!

 

[back alley]

i scan at the max that my scanner allows.

i had some prints made from jpeg files and tiff files - same print - and found the tiff files had better edge sharpness than the jpegs, noticeably with just the eyeball kinda difference.

joe

 

[JoeFriday]

TIFF files don't have an compression (at least in theory).. JPG files have a varying level of compression that you can specify.. at any JPG level, the file is 'simplified', which means throwing away some of the data.. it's not noticeable on a computer screen, particularly at 72 dpi, but it's very noticeable when printing the files

if it's a photo that you plan to print, always save it as a TIFF.. once it has been saved as a JPG, you've lost some data that can never be recovered

as for files that you upload here.. I generally save them as JPGs at 72 dpi, with the long side at 10 inches

 

[aad]

Thanks-now it makes sense.