Bill ORourke 
, Feb 06, 2012; 03:08 p.m.
This may or may not be the forum for this, I'll let a moderator decide. I thought it might be of broader interest to place it here as opposed to a film or digital darkroom thread. As some of you know, I've been scanning some old negatives. In each case, with the exception of some black and white stuff, I have taken them to a local national drug store chain. Initially I had asked if they could do high resolution scans, to which they replied no. So I resigned myself to accept the jpegs they gave me, content with using them to learn the ropes of post work via some free software. I had about a dozen cds made so far.
The last cd, prior to this week, accidentally came back as a tiff file and I posted a question here on pnet as to how to convert it to jpeg. The first indication of something being amiss was the length of time it took to download, followed by an inabilty to open the file in some programs. With the help of some here I was able to convert the files and live happily ever after.
I started playing around with the accidental tiff files and noticed a dramatic difference in the resolution. I thought that in the future I may request the scans be done to produce tiff instead of jpeg since it seemed to give me more options in post.
This week I waltzed up to the national drugstore chain photo counter with some more 35mm negatives in hand and explained to the clerk about the recent accidental production of a tiff cd during my last visit. I asked if it was possible to make the same accident happen with these negatives. She said she'd "see what we can do" and I should come back about 3 so they had time to work with it.
At 4 o'clock I returned to pick up the cd only to find they had, as they normally had done, given me jpegs. Fortunately, two other employees in the photo department took an interest in my case when they overheard me say to the girl, "I wonder what they did different last time". They asked if I could stick around and offered they'd try to get to the bottom of it.
The next half hour they spent searching through my order history, playing with adustments on the machine, debating whether if I really had gotten tiff files from them or if I was just imaginging it.
Finally one of them suggested they use a "premium cd" to see if there was a difference.
VIOLA !
Magically the negatives were converted to tiff files right there before our eyes. Apparently the machine automatically switches to tiff with the better cd!
None of the employees at the store were aware they could offer customers higher resolution scans simply by using a premium cd. Neither did I.
I don't understand the process that took place for this to happen, I can only say that it did. I thought some here may be interested in this little quirk if they are, as I am, scanning old negatives and downloading them to their computer.
The employees told me that when I bring in film in the future, to ask that it be put on a premium cd. Hope that is helpful to some here. It's the least I can do to thank you for helping me.
Bill
Steve Smith 
, Feb 06, 2012; 03:43 p.m.
VIOLA !
You got an over-sized violin as well?!
How much higher is the TIF file resolution compared to the JPG files?
Bill ORourke , Feb 06, 2012; 03:58 p.m.
Same image....... Tiff 6.3 MB / JPG 3.3 MB.
Sorry :( voila. Sometimes I can be lyxdesic.
David Scott , Feb 06, 2012; 04:19 p.m.
Hi Bill, that's great you found a way to communicate with those folks. Any chance you can give us a hint about: what city you are in, or what chain you are using? Or what machine they are using?
For important film I go to a pro lab that does a good job for a reasonable price. But there is a handy drugstore that I use for test rolls. The drugstore has a decent Fuji Frontier, and I know it could produce higher resolution scans to CD than it does. I have tried asking a number of different ways -- for a high-resolution scan, or for a 16-base scan, for TIFF, etc. I will try asking for a Premium CD next time...
Michael Chang 
, Feb 06, 2012; 04:33 p.m.
6.3MB seems awfully small for a TIFF file.
Bill ORourke , Feb 06, 2012; 05:47 p.m.
David,
I'm in Michigan. The store is a Walgreens in mid Michigan. The machuine was a Fuji. In fact they were discussing whether or not to call Fuji to find out how to change the settings when we stumbled across the premium disc solution. I can run by there tomorrow and grab the model number if that helps. Their hypothesis was that the machine reads the non premium disc as not having enough space for the tiff, so it defaults to jpeg. We thought the problem was in the scan process of the negatives, but as it turned out, that was not the case. I watched as they produced 2 discs from the same information the machine had. The premium disc ended up tiff without changing scan settings. I know this because I was physically holding the negatives in an envelope at the time.
Michael,
I don't know. I'm new at this scanning stuff so I really don't have a rosetta stone reference. I'd be curious to see if I brought them an even better cd if the file would be even larger.
Michael Chang , Feb 06, 2012; 06:16 p.m.
Bill, I'm no expert at this but it shouldn't be difficult to figure out if you compile the information.
A CD will typically hold 700MB of data so whether disc space is an issue will be readily apparent by the number of images and their scanned pixel dimension.
The TIFF files they gave you is likely (highly) compressed by choosing one of their available compression schemes (Huffman encoding, for example).
You might ask if burning to DVD is an option. This should give you space for uncompressed TIFF files if the machine will make it available. Even better if they can just download the scanned data to a USB stick which you can provide.
William Kahn 
, Feb 06, 2012; 06:53 p.m.
Bill, this is interesting info, and potentially useful. But, it does raise some questions. First, I agree with Michael that 6.3MB is very small for a TIFF file, and it makes me wonder what resolution the scanner was using. Is there a way to find out?
Second, you indicated that the scanner produced the TIFF file using the image data from the original JPEG scan. Is it possible that the scanner simply converted the JPEG images to TIFF? I tried an experiment to see how the numbers would work out. I selected a 35mm image scanned to a TIFF file at 2820 PPI resolution (Minolta Scan Multi II). The file size is 58.7MB, pixel dimensions 3946X2601. Then, I tried these tests:
Convert TIFF to JPEG @ 8 bits/channel > File size 10.8 MB
Convert JPEG back to TIFF @ 8 bits/channel > File size 29.3 MB
Convert JPEG back to TIFF @ 16 bits/channel > File size 58.7 MB (Pixel dimension remain unchanged throughout the tests.)
Note that converting JPEG back to TIFF @ 8bits/channel results in a TIFF to JPEG size ratio of nearly 2 to 1, almost the same as the file size ratio you got with your scans from Walgreens (6.3MB to 3.3MB).
So, I'm thinking that, essentially, the Walgreens scanner just converted the original 8-bit JPEG scan to TIFF. Another problem there, of course, is that all of the JPEG compression artifacts remain in that TIFF file.
Would it be possible to go back to Walgreen and ask them to rescan the negatives to TIFF files, rather than using the previously scanned data? I'd really like to know how this comes out, so I can go to our local Walgreen (the only lab left in town) and have a chat with those nice folks...
Bill ORourke , Feb 06, 2012; 07:35 p.m.
William,
My understanding of what transpired is that it is an independent, two step process. Scanning the negatives and then transferring that information to a disc. When disc one was inserted it came back jpg. When the premium disc was inserted it came back tiff. They are assuming the reason for the difference is the quality of the disc. In fact, when they first came up with that idea I questioned it, stating I didn't see how disc quality would have any bearing on the scan process. The reason we came to the conclusion that it must be the disc quality was because they couldn't find any settings to change, either in resolution or format, and were debating whether or not to call Fuji when they popped in a premium disc, just for the heck of it.
I can go back this week and bring a strip of negatives to double check our assupmtion, but I have a feeling we'll be back at square one.
An interesting aside. A few months ago I brought a bunch of negatives to the same store. They told me they could only get, or were only allowed to put about 24 frames on a disc. I said fine. When I went back I found out that the clerk had put about 130 frames on the disc to save me money, and for convenience, which I appreciated. I just checked those files and they are not any more compressed than the jpg discs with 24 images. In other words, the standard disc is capable of holding alot more information than they originally stated. At least 5 times as much in this example. Given that, why would the machine feel the need to convert to tiff for 24 images if the difference in information volume is only double, which seemed to be the factor of this last batch.
I'm confused now.
EDIT: I should underline that the employees did not, and do not know how to scan the negatives to tiff files short of simply inserting a premium disc.
Maybe the answer is for me to get the model number of the machine and calling Fuji customer support for guidance.
John H. 
, Feb 06, 2012; 08:43 p.m.
Could it be that the machine is set up to detect the "premium disc" and make the write settings based on the detection? Taking employees out of the equation to some extent. Then charge more for "premium discs".
