Ghostscript PDF -> TIFF conversion is awful for me, people rave about it, I alone look sullen

gswin32c.exe -q -dNOPAUSE -sDEVICE=tiffg4 -sOutputFile=a.tif a.pdf -c quit

convert -define quantum:polarity=min-is-white
        -endian MSB
        -units PixelsPerInch
        -density 204x196
        -monochrome
        -compress Fax
        -sample 1728
        "input.pdf" "output.tif"

nconvert -page 1 -out tiff -dpi 200 -c 2 -o c.tif FMD.pdf

os.popen(' '.join([
                       self._ghostscriptPath + 'gswin32c.exe',
                       '-q',
                       '-dNOPAUSE',
                       '-dBATCH',
                       '-r800',
                       '-sDEVICE=tiffg4',
                       '-sPAPERSIZE=a4',
                       '-sOutputFile=%s %s' % (tifDest, pdfSource),
                       ]))

gswin32c.exe -q -dNOPAUSE -r600 -sDEVICE=tiff24nc -sOutputFile=a.tif a.pdf -c quit