How many people out there have scanned in to computer their contact sheets a flatbed at 350dpi is very good and is ok for brousing though a large collection?

-- David A. Henderson (four.bananas@lineone.net), February 16, 2000

Answers

If you're talking about scanning photographic contacts and viewing them on a screen, you don't need anything over screen resolution, 72dpi. 350dpi for a screen image is a total waste of space and time. But why not skip the photographic contact stage altogether, if you're just looking for screen output? Scan your negs directly for proofing, cheaper and faster...

-- shawn gibson (SeeInsideForever@yahoo.com), February 17, 2000.

Scanning at 300 or more dpi will give you a decent sized pic on screen but probably of poor quality. Scanning negs can take ages... I prefer to look at the proofs directly :)

-- Nigel Smith (nlandgl@eisa.net.au), February 17, 2000.

Contact sheets scanned on a 300dpi scanner are a good way to index your images on disk. I scan all my contact sheets, which gives about 300x450 pixels for each image, not good enough for anything but indexing, but great for the intended purpose. I scan 8x10 prints for quality digital versions.

In colour, I scan a page of sleeved negatives or slides on a 600dpi flatbed with transparent media adaptor, which gives me a colour index page for each roll.

My negative files have alternating film-sleeve pages and A4 sleeves holding a printout (actual size) of the index image. It makes finding the right image much easier. As the size of my files grow, I'll probably move to keeping the index pages in separate binders, to reduce handling of the actual film.

-- Christopher Biggs (chris@stallion.oz.au), February 17, 2000.