DragonCon

I'm in Connecticut and Boston is one of the last major cities in the area that hasn't ever pissed me off. If you gimme a date, Ill get some train fare.
 
Hmm, I know why you went for PCDs, Death, I was just wondering if there was anything special about the format itself.
 
It's sort of a complex topic, so I'll try to put it in as simple terms as possible.

They are CDs which have photographs stored on them.
 
Very helpful. :(

I just wanted to know why they take more room than a bitmap which appears to do the same job.
 
Wedge009 said:
I just wanted to know why they take more room than a bitmap which appears to do the same job.
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"Idiot coders" is the most likely answer. The last photo CD I had made (of last year's DC) had large files (regular JPGs, just at the highest quality instead of something more reasonable for online viewing), but only a couple hundred KB at most. With the space on your average CD, though, there's no real penalty for not optimizing the images.
 
Mmm, I must be thinking of a different format then, because these had .PCD extensions, and I think they were labelled "Kodak Photo CD".

And this was from the days before digital cameras. If they were using JPEGs, I would complain if they didn't use the highest quality settings on my photos. You can always downgrade the quality for online viewing.
 
As someone who's worked at a photostore with a mini lab...

Bigger images take more time to scan, hence are less profitible unless they charge more for them. If you were really serious about image quality, you would invest $15,000 in a drum scanner.

And lets face it, the majority of people getting picture CDs done are using their $200 uber-zoom point and shoot that has a lens just adequate for a 4x6 print.

Photo CD's, standard scans from Frontier minilabs (100k-200k) aren't going to be great. They're going to be good enough for printing 4x6's at 300dpi, or good enough for viewing at 72 dpi on your monitor. Why? Because this entire market is geared towards efficiency and consumers, not professionals or Prosumers for that matter.

To my understanding Frontier Mini Labs (which are really, really popular now) are designed to scan primarily as JPEGs or BMPs (I think, I might be wrong) if that's what they used.

How many grandparents with 15 gazillion pictures of their new grandkid is going to know what to do with a 30mb TIFF anyhow?

Plus 24 images at 200k a piece isn't even 5 mb on a CD, but they're not really charging you for the CD, they're charging you for the scanning time and interruption in workflow because they probably have several dozen more one hour jobs to crank out behind you.

/rant

Whatever. I just brought up a whole host of issues, but I hope this enlightens.

I don't mean to sound evil, but if I come across that way, yes, I am evil.
 
Wedge009 said:
Mmm, I must be thinking of a different format then, because these had .PCD extensions, and I think they were labelled "Kodak Photo CD".
Click to expand...

That's something different entirely. Kodak's proprietary Photo CD format is kinda bloated. I was using "photo CD" as a generic term for photos digitized onto a disc for easier viewing (like using "kleenex" to refer to any facial tissue, regardless of actual manufacturer).

As for the rant, these are unprocessed rolls of negatives to be developed then digitized, not scans of already-printed pictures. The grocery store whose photo lab (they call it that, but it's hardly a real photo lab) has a contract with a professional photo lab run by Kodak, for outsourced handling of specialized jobs (like making CDs of photos, pictures larger than 8x12, copies of already-printed photos for which the negatives are unavailable, and so forth). The shipping to and from the lab is the primary time killer, not the actual developing and digitizing/burning.

Oh, and my pictures were taken with a $60 Pentax IQZoom 60S camera. :p
 
Hey Death,

Did you guys have a WC-clone bashing and if you did, I assume there were a lot of pictures? I wonder what the Freespace guys would say in response this year around.
 
psych said:
Did you guys have a WC-clone bashing and if you did, I assume there were a lot of pictures? I wonder what the Freespace guys would say in response this year around.
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They've already started, and I'm already mad that our side is involved in the "discussion."
 
psych said:
Hey Death,

Did you guys have a WC-clone bashing and if you did, I assume there were a lot of pictures? I wonder what the Freespace guys would say in response this year around.
Click to expand...

Yes, and yes.

I don't know about others, but I burned through like 3 and a half rolls of 24-shot film documenting the carnage (compared to 2 rolls of con costumes and Wingnut shots), including a couple of shots that were taken for me, by Tye, as I "reviewed" Earth and Beyond.

As for the FS mod people, they're cordially invited to perform sexually improbable acts with barnyard animals.
 
They've already started, and I'm already mad that our side is involved in the "discussion."
Click to expand...

As best I can tell, it's just Bob trolling some mod forum.

As for Boston -- I'm thinking November 14th-16th... gotta check with ace first, but that's the tentative plan on my end (and Frosty has to do whatever I say, as per my understanding).
 
Boston was the only city in the Northeast that I had trouble with. I went into a Chinese restaurant there for about 50 minutes. It was only enough time to have a plate of lobster. I came out and found out that some idiot broke into my car. This was in downtown Boston, around 1:00 in the afternoon. I left that city convinced never to go back.

Oh, Atlanta? That's nowhere near PA.
 
14th to 16th should be ok for me - I'll let you know for sure once that's deffinate and as the time gets a bit closer.
 
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