Viewing Digital Pictures on a TV, Monitor/Print Matching
Original publication September 14, 2002
Q. I need to transfer my 35-mm slides to either CD or DVD and be able to view them on an analog TV set (eventually on a digital set). Can you tell me what apparatus is necessary for 1) copying and 2) converting to the NTSC video signal? Kodak sells a “Photo CD System” for transfer of 35-mm film but I’m sure that it is too expensive to purchase so I would have to find a photo shop that offers this service.
-Richard Hansen
A. The first thing you need is a film scanner. These are special scanners that only scan negatives and slides, not documents or photographs. They are about the size of an external CD drive, connect via USB, and come with software for converting your film negatives and slides into jpegs and other digital image formats. Your slides will look as they are, and the scanner software will convert your negatives into positives so they will look just like photographs on your screen. Scan your slides at high resolution and save the file as a tiff to preserve the image quality. Then save copies of the tiffs as jpegs at 72dpi, which is the proper resolution for your television screen, and burn them to a CD. The least expensive film scanner I know of is the Pacific Image 1800U at $179.00. Better models are the Canon FS-2710 and the Minolta D’ImageScan II, both available for $299.00. Film scanners are something of a specialty item so you may need to go to a professional camera store or mail order to buy one. When you are done converting your images, if you won’t have a future need for the scanner you should be able to recoup most of your purchase price by selling it on ebay as many photographers look for them on the used market. To display the pictures on your television, some new DVD players have a picture playback mode that will display the jpegs from your burned CDs on your TV. A good one for you would be the JVC XF-S500 at $159.00. Besides the picture playback, it is a progressive scan model for eventual use on your digital HDTV.
Q. I am not happy with prints that I make from my digital camera. How can I match the colors that were in the original scene or that I see on my monitor?
-Barry S., Pittsburgh
A. For a long time, it was hard a non-professional to get true photographic quality from a digital camera and an inkjet printer. Now, two new technologies allow home users to make realistic photographs easily. They are called “EXIF Print” and “Print Image Matching” (PIM). When you use a camera equipped with EXIF Print or PIM, when the photograph is taken the camera adds extra information to the image file. When the photograph is printed using a printer and software that supports the same system, this information is used to set the printer for optimum results. The result is prints that look like real photographs. If you want to make photo-quality prints, you can save yourself a lot of headaches by getting an Exif Print or PIM camera-printer combination. Exif Print is an open standard supported by many printer and camera manufacturers. PIM is a proprietary system created by Epson, so only Epson printers support it. Some cameras from Sony, Toshiba, Epson, Kyocera, and several others offer PIM support. The systems are not interchangeable so if you buy a camera that supports PIM, be sure your printer supports PIM also. This also applies to Exif Print camera-printer systems.
