Digital Imaging Lab

106G & F Olin Library

Cornell University

Ithaca, NY 14853

607.255.5177

Located in Uris Library, CIDC's digital imaging studio consists of a PowerPhase One digital camera scanning back (6,000 pixels x 8,400 pixels) on a ZBE Satellite copy stand. Images are captured at 600 dpi, and 36-bit color internal capture (interpolated down to 24-bit color images for file storage) running on a Apple Macintosh G3 computer, a calibrated image editing station, and a networked image server. The PowerPhase One digital camera creates an image file up to one-hundred and forty megabytes in size. The special Videssence lights are cool fluorescent lights calibrated at 5,000° kelvin for optimal and even lighting. 

The rich master file is then used to create a cropped, color corrected copy for the creation of a .JPEG and MrSID (Multiresolution Seamless Image Database) derivatives. MrSID is a next-generation image file format from LizardTech. MrSID reduces the size of high-resolution images to less than 3% of their original size while maintaining the quality and integrity of the original. Each master file is then burned to cd media for archiving in the vault at Rare and Manuscript Collections, Cornell University Library.

PowerPhase One Camera and Videssence Light setup