Re: Cheap MF scanning (was Re: By the way...)

[Greg Erker <erker@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

>I have an Artec Scanrom 4E ($100 mail order) that scans at 400dpi
>(optical, not interpolated).  This is fine for the web.  It has a 4x6
>inch tray that you place the original in.  It's about the size of an
>external CD-ROM drive.  It's meant for scanning snapshots and slides,
>but I have my best results with B&W negatives.  My slides seem to come
>out dark, and I haven't really bothered to put much effort into
>figuring out what's wrong.

  Eric knows more about this than me, but ... slides
have a higher gamma than negatives and prints (I think
that's right) so you will have a hard time scanning
any contrasty slide and get good results.

  Since 99% of my MF stereo is on Velvia I suspect
they wouldn't scan very good.


You can see some samples in the
>architectural details section of my 35mm page, and a comparison versus
>a HP Deskscan III in the Greenmarket section of my Pinhole page.

  I'll take a look.

>Do you want to scan mounted pairs, or film strips?  I've been scanning
>my slide bar film strips, but haven't had time to finish processing
>them for the web.  By scanning single film strips (as opposed to
>different strips from my Lubitels) I hope to minimize the alignment
>errors (rotation, etc.) that scanning introduces.  They'll eventually
>wind up as anaglyphs (the most readily accessible format for the web).
>I want to try scanning some mounted pairs (that way they shouldn't
>have alignment problems), but I'll have to figure out the darkness
>problem first.

  I'd like to scan my good, already mounted, slides.
I put a lot of effort into setting the stereo window
and cropping the 55x55mm original down to 50x50 or 40x50
so I'd want to scan them as they are.

Greg