Graham The reason is historical. 1884 marriages were scanned a good number of years ago by a volunteer who had access to a local source of films. The film source possibly was not in pristine condition, which means never mind how good the scanner is it will not be able to produce quality scans. The same situation applies to other years and events. Other sources and scanning resources were used to enable the Project to have sufficient scans for our transcribers. We owe a debt of gratitude to those individuals involved in the early scanning process. In fact some three years or so ago, we were given an option to purchase a large block of films from a local society/library. These were purchased on behalf of FreeBMD but it was only later that we found out some of the films were not of an ideal quality. Suffice to say, this is all history. Therefore, some two years the decision was taken to bring all film ordering and scanning under a central control. Since October 2003 new films have been bought by FreeBMD from the ONS and scanned using high quality/expensive scanners. Thousand of pounds have been spent buying the films to date and the proof of the pudding is the exceptional quality of new scans uploaded to FreeBMD. We have an ongoing program to ensure we maintain the supply of high quality scans. Please see our News Page at: http://freebmd.rootsweb.com/news.html on our commitment on the ordering of new films. In due course it is the intention to replace those scans which are of a poor quality. Allan Raymond ----- Original Message ----- From: "Graham Chamberlain" <gc@katiandgraham.com> To: <FreeBMD-Admins-L@rootsweb.com> Sent: 05 October 2005 15:33 Subject: Quality of Scans I am currently transcribing 1884 Marriages (.tiff images) and am frustrated at the poor quality of the scans. They all seem to be clear at the top of a page but the quality deteriorates alarmingly as one gets nearer the bottom with many of the page numbers often being wholly or partially illegible. Why are the scans so poor and is there anything that can be done to improve the legibility? best wishes Graham