Grex Photography Conference

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Grex Photography Item 51: The scanner item
Entered by scott on Sun Jul 30 21:43:46 UTC 2000:

Funny, there didn't seem to an obvious scanner item.

11 responses total.

#1 of 11 by scott on Sun Jul 30 21:51:22 2000:

I recently got a film and slide scanner for my computer.  This is a scanner
optimized for scanning small images at high resolution, as needed if you have
a bunch of old family slides to digitize.  

What I bought was a "PrimeFilm 1800i" from Tiger Direct
http://www.tigerdirect.com  , a cute iMac-ish thing with USB.  $200 gets
you not especially great driver software, the usual bunch of photo software I
haven't bother to figure out, and marginal documentation.  The scanner,
however, works well, and the resolution is pretty impressive (the maximum
setting produces huge files that I can't even look at, something like 300Mb).
The driver at least has a basic setting for resolution, positive/negative film,
and directory to scan into (with a filename like "photo_001" where it will just
keep creating files with the number incrementing).  So you can at least use it
reasonably easily once you figure it out.

I've also found a neat use for it aside from scanning in slides and scanning
in negatives from photos I shoot:  scanning other odd things that fit in the
slide tray.  See http://www.wwnet.net/~scott/cdslice.html for an example of
scanning a slice of a microwaved CD.  This scanner almost acts as a
microscope, since the resolution is so high and the backlit nature of the
scanning.

#2 of 11 by rcurl on Mon Jul 31 01:57:59 2000:

Thanks! I had been looking for an inexpensive slide/film scanner, and
this finally comes near to my goal. I've used a page scanner for this
purpose and its resolution is *almost* good enough - but not quite -
for web page use.

#3 of 11 by keesan on Sun Jul 8 23:32:19 2001:

Is there DOS software available for the HP Scanjet 4p or 5p (5c?).
How about Win31 software and if so can we download it?

#4 of 11 by eprom on Sun May 29 22:07:47 2005:

I've been looking at getting a scanner. After doing some research on the
web, i've noticed some of the newer flatbed scanners come close and even
excede the resolution of some of the good film scanners on the market.

The scanner I use at school is a Nikon coolscan 8000, which has a max
res. of 4000 dpi. But costs a small fortune since it does medium format.

Just from browsing the web it seems that the Canon 8400F flatbed scanner
is the way to go. It has a max res. of 3200 dpi (48-bit color) and is
only $150.  What really caught my eye was an online article by PC
magazine, that said the output was comparable to the Minolta Dimage IV
(a dedicated film scanner).

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1759,1712301,00.asp

#5 of 11 by scott on Sun May 29 22:12:36 2005:

I'd look into the software that comes bundled, though.  It's been a while
since I tried HP stuff, but last I heard their software was still bloated.
I tend to go with Epson because they're more open to Linux support.  

But those tiny little Canon scanners sure do look nice - I was sorely tempted.

#6 of 11 by eprom on Sun May 29 23:06:43 2005:

I know what you mean by the bloatware..I hate that too, which is why 
I only installed the twain drivers for my current all-in-one and let 
Photoshop do the editing.

HP is bad about that. Canon at least gives you a copy of Photoshop LE
(light edition) for editing, which you can install at your discretion.

#7 of 11 by twenex on Mon May 30 16:54:47 2005:

Hmm. Do Epson provide binary-only drivers, or (against all hope) do they
release the technical specs to the Linux kernel folks?

#8 of 11 by scott on Mon May 30 17:31:43 2005:

I'm not 100% sure, but I do believe Epson doesn't hide the specs from Linux
developers.  That's in contrast to companies who provide their own Windows
drivers but keep the specs and interfacing details secret.

#9 of 11 by gull on Tue May 31 20:58:01 2005:

It's not so much the "kernel folks" that are interested; rather it's the SANE developers. They write the scanner drivers. If you look up the SANE homepage you'll find a list of currently supported scanners.

#10 of 11 by eprom on Wed Jun 1 17:55:15 2005:

here's a comparison between the Nikon 8000 and the Canon 8400F. I had to resize both the Nikon and Canon scans to get them to be the same size.
This is a scan of a 645 slide.
[http://homepages.wmich.edu/~j4castee/scanner/scanners.jpg]

These next two are of a 35mm slide. [http://homepages.wmich.edu/~j4castee/scanner/post_edit.jpg] [http://homepages.wmich.edu/~j4castee/scanner/raw_scan.jpg]

#11 of 11 by eprom on Wed Jun 1 17:59:27 2005:

grr...the formatting got messed up...anyways.. here's a comparison between the Nikon 8000 and the Canon 8400F. I had to resize both the Nikon and Canon scans to get them to be the same size. This is a scan of a 645 slide.

[http://homepages.wmich.edu/~j4castee/scanner/scanners.jpg] These next two are of a 35mm slide.

[http://homepages.wmich.edu/~j4castee/scanner/post_edit.jpg]

[http://homepages.wmich.edu/~j4castee/scanner/raw_scan.jpg]

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