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One of the most important recent trends in contemporary photography is the impact that digital imaging is having and will continue to have on 35mm camera shooters. The simple truth is that while you can capture images using a digital camera, digital images can originate from many different sources, including film shot with your 35mm camera or with your existing collection of 35mm slides and negatives. In the three sections that follows, you’ll learn how your new and old 35mm film can become part of the digital imaging’s three major processes of acquisition, manipulation, and output.
Image Acquisition
For 35mm camera users, acquisition can be defined as the process of turning existing silver-based photographs into digital images that can be manipulated with a computer or e-mailed anywhere on the planet.
Digitizing Your Prints
While there are several different methods that can be used to acquire digital images, scanners may be the most practical because they allow you to create computer-ready images using the same cameras and film you already own.
Digitizing Film
There are many tools and techniques that you can use to turn your silver-based film into digital form. There are digitizing services such as Kodak’s Photo CD and Picture Disk or, if you prefer to do it yourself, you’ll need a film scanner.
Picture Disk
Kodak’s Picture Disk gives consumers an economical way to digitize images from 35mm film.
The image files stored on a Picture Disk are created using industry standard JPEG compression. Each picture contains 24-bits of color information, and the pictures are 720KB when uncompressed. Image files varies in size depending on the number of pictures stored on the disk,. All of the pictures use about 900 KB (kilobytes) of disk space, and each picture gets roughly the same amount of that space.
Picture CD
Much as Photo CD and Pro Photo CD can be used by experienced, even professional, users, Kodak’s latest foray into digitizing services is called Picture CD and might be considered an entry-level approach Images from any standard 35mm as well as Advanced Photo System film can be stored as high-resolution digitized images on Picture CD. Kodak Picture CD is an all-in-one, auto-loading CD-ROM for storing, enhancing, sharing and printing pictures with your computer. Each Kodak Picture CD typically holds one roll of film.
Film Scanners
By digitizing the original film, instead of a print, film scanners eliminate one generation. Besides removing the print phase from the process, you save the cost and time associated with having a print made.
Film Scanning Alternatives
If your few scanning needs are occasional an inexpensive flatbed scanner with a transparency adapter may be the perfect solution.
Image Output
Although it’s already become a cliché to say it, we are in the era of the “digital darkroom” where images can be manipulated and printed using completely digital techniques. Like most clichés there is some truth in this statement. While you can acquire images using conventional silver-based film and cameras, more and more photographers are using darkroom-style techniques covered in the last chapter along with printing techniques mentioned in this one to output digital images. In this section, you’ll learn about some of the variety of desktop printing technologies that can be used to print digital images with your computer.
 Desktop Color Printers
One of the immutable laws of digital imaging is that the pace of technological change is often difficult to keep up with and can be unpredictable. For example, if you ask my what the best photo quality printer is today, you may get a different answer than if you asked me a week ago. That’s exactly what’s happened to photographic quality desktop color printers. The Stylus Color raised the bar and many companies, including Epson, brought—and continue to bring—new photorealistic printers to market on an ongoing. The result is that if today if a company claims that its printer will produce photo quality output, chances are it will.
Ink-Jet
When considering purchasing a photo quality printer, don’t forget consumables. They have an often considerable effect on the total cost of ownership of any color printer. Consumables are those products that the printer consumes in order to produce output. The most obvious consumable is the ink cartridges themselves. It is difficult to say how long a cartridge lasts because it depends mostly on how you use the printer.
An even more important consumable is paper. When it comes to photo quality printers the paper you use is almost as important as the print head’s design. The weak link of all ink-jet printers was fading from UV radiation and susceptibility to water damage. These limitations can be overcome by laminating the finished print but new technologies are rushing in to fix these problems.
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