Film scanner woes

by Ian Posted on April 14, 2007

A couple of days ago I finally got around to scanning the negatives of the photos I took of the lunar eclipse on 3rd March.

I set up my film scanner and scanned the films in the same way as I had with previous films. However, the results I got were absolutely awful. Instead of a black sky with the moon, I had a very grainy mottled green/grey sky. As I already had a set of prints from when the film was developed, I knew what it should look like and my scans were not it.

When I had first installed the Dimage Scan software on my computer I had installed versions 1.0 and 1.1. For some reason I had problems with version 1.1 and was unable to save the images that I scanned using it. Version 1.0 worked and gave me good images and so keen to play with my new toy I ignored the problem with 1.1 and pressed on with using version 1.0. This was slow, taking about 10 minutes to scan an image, but I wrote this off as an investment to get the films into digital format. Of course this was over 2 years ago and so I had totally forgotton about version 1.1. Anyway, I ran up version 1.1 and scanned one of the moon images and it looked just like the print and nothing like the previous scan. So that was the good news, at least the scanner worked properly, I just had to be able to saved the better images.


I download the latest version from the Konica-Minolta website, uninstalled my copy and reinstalled it. Success, now I could save the scans.

There was another plus to this, using the new software, the time to scan a negative at the highest resolution I could (2800dpi) is only about 2.5 minutes. This meant that I was able to rescan the 26 images later that evening.

This then got me thinking, I had already scanned 10 films and burnt 6 to DVD for long term storage. Did this mean that there was better image possible from the films I had already scanned. So, I did some tests and when I looked in the shadows of the original scans compared to a new scan of the same image, I was able to see the same noise instead of black and a grainier image. The saving grace is that I have found this fairly on during my scans rather than 40 or 50 films in. As the scan speed is much quicker it shouldn’t take too long to get back to where I was before I discovered this.

Original scan
New scan

So anyway, after all that, my photos of the Lunar Eclipse March 2007 are up on my gallery.

Posted in General, Photography, Software | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments

There’s more to life than cocktail sausages

by Ian Posted on April 13, 2007

We had a party this afternoon for my daughter’s birthday. After they had played at the local indoor playground for an hour and a half they had sandwiches, cocktail sausages, crisps etc. Later when we had been home for a while, my 7 year old son asked if we had any of the cocktail sausages left. I told him that we didn’t bring them home and he replied “Never mind, there’s more to life than cocktail sausages”.

It just wasn’t the sort of comment I expected.

Posted in General | 3 Comments

I’ve been tagged

by Ian Posted on April 13, 2007

Carol from My View of “IT” has tagged me for the five reasons why I blog meme. I have posted about this before in “Why do I blog“, but not stopped to think of 5 actual reasons. So here goes:

  1. I blog because it is an ideal outlet for things I want to talk about, without the hassle of creating yet another new page in the miscellaneous section of my website.
  2. I blog because it allows me to vent my frustration over things that occur, usually and I’m not sure why, this seems to be related to servicing and maintenance of cars.
  3. I blog because I can communicate information about how my family tree research is progressing. Who knows, the next person to read it may have the information I need to locate another relative.
  4. I blog because I like to share technical information I have found to resolve a specific problem, hopefully to make it easier for anyone trying to do the same.
  5. I blog because I like to think that someone out there is interested enough to read what I’m rambling on about.

Now all that remains is to pass this on. I have asked the following to take part

If you link back to the Blog Meme Tracker, you can see who has already been tagged and record who you tag.

Posted in Blogging, General | Tagged | 3 Comments

How often do you update your software?

by Ian Posted on April 6, 2007

This will only relate to Windows systems.

The first two are the types of update that most people will consider.

Operating system patches.

I have Windows set to download the patches as they become available and notify me. I then usually install within the next couple of days.

Anti-Virus

This is set to download and install automatically. The Avast software I use checks every 4 hours to see if there are updates available.

But what about the other software that you have installed? You probably have things like Acrobat Reader, Flash Player, Java and a multitude of other applications which also have security issues and updates to resolve them. You may remember to update some of them, but are you sure you got them all? The Secunia website has a Software Inspector that will check your system for software versions and provide updates or links to the application website. The inspector requires Javascript enabled to work.

Secunia Software Inspector

Even if you think your Windows system is up to date, it might be worth a check, it only takes a minute.

Posted in Computers, Software | Tagged , | Comments Off on How often do you update your software?

Another unexpected visitor in the garden

by Ian Posted on April 5, 2007

Pheasant in garden
We had another unexpected bird in the garden this afternoon. We had a pheasant in the garden. Now, we live in an urban area and a pheasant isn’t exactly what you would class as a town bird, so I guess it had got a bit lost. It spent about 2 hours wandering around our garden before it flew off over the gardens up the road. We took a few photos through the kitchen window as it walked around.
Robin on hosepipe reel
The robin which has been around for the last week or so, decided to get in on the photo session. It kept posing for its photo between meals.

Posted in General, Photography | Tagged , | Comments Off on Another unexpected visitor in the garden

How do you store your computer data?

by Ian Posted on April 3, 2007

Tape Drive
I know my answer to this question, but I am not sure it is the correct way going forward as data quantity increases.

I have the majority of my data located on a server computer with a RAID hard disc array. This means that I can have a hard disc fail and not loose any data before I can replace it. I backup the data stored on this computer to tape every week to a pool of weekly and monthly backup tapes. This gives me the ability to restore previous versions of files that are deleted or overwritten.

My computer, with the software applications on, accesses the data on the server and doesn’t store any critical information locally. This means if I have a hard disc failure on this machine, I don’t loose any critical data and only have to reinstall the operating system and programs.

As I scan my film negatives, I am scanning them at the highest resolution that the film scanner is capable of and storing them in tiff format. For long term storage of the scanned images, I have created par files for each image, which will allow me to recreate the image if the original is damaged. Each film has been stored on DVD, 2 copies, each on different manufacturer’s DVD. One set will be stored at my mum’s and I will retain the other scanned set as well as the original negatives.

I know that there are other things I should be doing such as storing my tapes at a different location rather than at home. This locating of storage media remotely protects against data loss in the case of a fire. Although the original data would be lost, I would be able to recover it from backup.

Coming from an IT environment, I am aware of the importance of data backup and am able to implement a solution that will work for me. I often wonder what, if anything, most computer users do to ensure the long term protection of their data. There are USB flash drives, external hard drives, online storage and DVD/CD storage available. As the home computer becomes more important for storing digital photos and other information, I wonder what will finally be targeted at the home user as a out of the box minimal configuration solution.

What do you do to protect your data?

Posted in Computers, Hardware | Tagged , , | 2 Comments