The principle of the thing

For most of the film rolls I shot between 1999 and 2003, I paid extra to have the images scanned to CD. During those years, the company used a proprietary image format just enough different from .jpeg so that none of my programs will recognize them. It was always sort of dumb because their image viewer's main feature is its ability to export the images as .jpegs. (A year ago they finally ditched their proprietary format to make everyone's lives easier.)

I am currently dealing with my photo CDs in the old format. Though exporting and transferring all these files is a hassle, it's not what's bothering me right now. So far, 7 of my early CDs were not scanned at the high resolution level they were supposed to be. In essence, part of the service I paid for, I didn't get. I'm feeling blase about it though because it was so long ago, and it's not like their high res was even very high.

I think I'll go ahead and finish exporting from the rest of the discs so I can present them with a complete list of faulty CDs when I write to complain. Since it's possible to order high-res scans without a CD (the images are made available on the internet), it's fairly simple to determine how much I should get reimbursed or credited. Whether they will or not is another matter.

Why didn't I notice it before? Well, I didn't know as much about digital images then, and I wasn't storing most of them on my computer because it didn't have that much memory. I'm not in the mood for a hassle, but seven is too many to ignore: it's the principle of the thing.

tags: photo+CDs, proprietary+file+formats