Organizing your tapes, film and photos

Organizing your tapes, film and photos

by | Nov 29, 2020 | Learning Zone, Tips & Tricks

At Charter Oak Scanning we understand how precious your memories are and keep careful track of each one of your items every step of the way. 

When you send or drop-off your analog media, whether it’s tapes, film, slides or photos, we first go through each of your items to count, organize and label each one with your name, order number and number of that item.

If you know the content of your tapes or film, you can label the outside of each tape or box and we will use that label as the title of the video file we produce. If you would like your videos in a certain order, you may find it easiest to number each one on the outside and we will follow the order that you have indicated.

If your tapes are not labeled and you don’t know what is on them, not to worry! We will number and label every item and you can easily rename your digital videos or film when you view them.

We use the same process for slides and photos. If you have slides in carousels or boxes you can may add  a label to the outside of the box if there isn’t one already. Any label or information written on the box will be used to name the folder that contains the slides in that box.

If you have photos, in can be helpful to organize them into groups and place each group in a labeled envelope or plastic bag. We will use that label to name the folder that includes those photos.

If you haven’t grouped your photos or labeled your slides, not to worry! We will number any bags or boxes and create folders with corresponding numbers. Once you have your digital photos it is easy to rename or organize your memories as you view them.

How many pixels is enough?

How many pixels is enough?

by | Oct 24, 2020 | Learning Zone

When it comes to resolution, intuition says more is better. But how much is enough? And is there a limit to how much resolution you can get from a scan?

DPI, or dots per inch, is a way of measuring the density of the resolution of a scanned photo, slide, or negative. A dot, or pixel, is a single unit representing one color in a digital image. Many pixels together make an image on your screen. Scanning at higher resolutions divides the same picture into more pixels.

DPI varies by media. Most photographs, printed at 1-hour photo huts, have about 600 DPI worth of resolution. This means you will get an increase in image quality going up to 600 DPI, after that you reach the physical resolution the media you’re scanning. For slide film and negatives, 2000 DPI – 4000 DPI is appropriate to capture near the limit of detail rendered in the celluloid emulsion.

A 35mm kodachrome slide image boundary is 34m x 23mm, converted to inches because it’s dot per INCH, 1.34” x 0.90”. At 4000 DPI, the image scanned will be 5360×3600 pixels or close to 19MP. There are 2 factors limiting the resolution captured on film to around 20 megapixels; film grain, and lens quality. Similar to pixels, film is made of small light sensitive particles. In color film these particles measure about 10-25 microns. So the “physical resolution” of film is about 2500 DPI.

Cheap lenses can reduce the detail in an original image, blurring it considerably. Low quality glass or plastic lenses on many cameras from the 70’s, 80’s, and 90s limits the quality of many images from this time period to 2500 DPI or less.