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Hi Nick.
Yes, Andy is correct. If you don’t scale the image first (using the Histogram Transformation tool) the resulting JPEG file will show as a blank, black image. This also applies to TIFF format images which can be saved as both 16-bit and 32-bit files. Normal JPEGs are indeed only 8-bit but for posting online should be fine.
Cheers,
NikI also used a Minolta slide scanner (with SCSI interface card) for many years and it was a brilliant performer. Sadly, one day it bit the dust and I couldn’t get it to work again. Having thousands of 35mm slides that hadn’t been scanned I decided to purchase a Plustek dedicated scanner (around £200) which works quite well and can certainly handle astronomical images well. I don’t think the quality of scanning is a good as the Minolta but it was a third of the price. I ran it under Windows 7 for a while but haven’t installed it on my newer Windows 10 PC yet. I’ve attached a couple of scans.
I certainly agree with many of the opinions here regarding Sky & Telescope magazine. Like many, I stopped my renewal for the magazine shortly after it was taken over.Sky & Telescope for me was at it’s best in the ’90’s under the editorship of Leif J. Robinson (who I had the pleasure of meeting once….he was a real gentleman). Writers such as Dennis di Cicco, Roger Sinnott, Alan M. MacRobert could be relied on to cover interesting topics (especially astrophotography) with style. I have a huge collection of the magazine dating back to the ’50’s and whilst it had lost the charm of the earlier decades it was a very comprehensive magazine and was in my opinion the best available. Sadly, it was all downhill from the buy-out. When I saw a feature in it on ‘how to use a finderscope’, coupled with the smaller format and less pages it was the end of the road for me and signified a significant shift away from more-specialist articles.
As a long time collector of the US’s ‘Astronomy’ magazine I think something similar happened to that. My introduction to that magazine in 1981 was when Richard Berry (who I’ve also met!) was editor and what a capable editor he was. The magazine was really good at covering items of current interest (again, the burgeoning field of amateur astrophotography) of which Berry was a world leader.
I think the UK’s two leading astro-mags, The Sky at Night and Astronomy Now, which themselves have improved over the years, outperform those once-mighty magazines.
