This communication provides notification that the USGS EROS Data Center (EDC) plans to transition from providing traditional photographic products from its historical film archive to providing only digital products from which paper prints can be generated by computer-linked printers or plotters.
The USGS archives thousands of rolls of film containing over eight million frames of historical aerial photographs gathered from various Federal agencies and dating back to the 1930's. The largest portion of this archive consists of original film taken during the 1940s through the 1970s to produce 1:24,000-scale USGS topographic quadrangle maps.
Since the early 1970s the USGS has offered a variety of photographic products from that archive, ranging from 9" to 40" prints along with 9" film copies. For the last few years there has been a decline in customer demand for paper prints and film products. Also, several major suppliers of traditional photo-processing chemicals, paper, etc. are converting to digital product lines and discontinuing traditional raw materials. Therefore, with production expenses becoming increasingly higher than can be recovered through product sales, and with a fundamental transition in the photographic materials industry, the USGS will discontinue offering photographic products.
Please note that no orders for photographic products will be accepted after September 3rd, 2004; however, all photographic orders received prior to that cut-off date will be filled.
The USGS/EDC will, however, begin offering two new digital products. One of the new digital products is a high-resolution, digitally scanned product, which will be made available upon request starting in July 2004. This digital product is created at approximately 1200 dpi with an output file size of approximately 120 megabytes from a black and white photograph and 360 megabytes from a color photograph and provided in a TIFF format. The cost for this product will be $24 for cleaning and scanning each frame plus the standard media generation costs of, $45/CD, $60/DVD or $30/file if ftp'd.
A second digital product is a medium-resolution digitized product and will be available on-line as the rolls of film are digitized beginning in October 2004. This medium-resolution digital product is created at approximately 600 dpi with an output file size of approximately 15 megabytes from a black and white photograph and 45 megabytes from a color photograph and will also be provided in a TIFF format. The cost for this product will be $1 per file access fee along with the media generation costs of $30/file if ftp'd, $45/CD, or $60/DVD.
Samples of both the high-resolution and medium-resolution digital products for two frames of photography over an area of New York City acquired in 1966 at a scale of 1:24,000 are available to FTP from the following location: http://edc.usgs.gov/phoenix_iv/new_york
Unless otherwise restricted, all digital products are public domain and can be modified to suit your needs or combined with other digital data. For further information please contact: custserv@usgs.gov
Businesses that can provide printed images from USGS digital data.
| DOI | USGS HOME | Biology | Geology | Mapping | Water | EROS HOME |
U.S. Department of the Interior |
U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) | EROS Data Center (An official website of the U.S. government.)
Please read this general Disclaimer URL: http://edc.usgs.gov//USGStostopPhotographicProduction.html Maintainer: Contact Us email at edcweb@usgs.gov Last Update:Monday, August 30, 2004 Important Notices 
|
