Hi, Tom,

In the specs it says its built-in projector lamp is used as the scanner 
illumination and the video shows a band of light going down the scan.

The 3D camera appears to be a parallax type of 3D all in the little hood.

The i7 4790S has a Passmark score of about 10,000, so it's a pretty 
capable machine. I just bought a machine with a similar processor and a 
256 G SSD for a non-profit (grant project) to do video oral history 
editing (by students, not me).

My two hotshot desktops run around 6,000 Passmark scores and the top of 
the line Pentium 4s ran about 500.

You ask a lot of good questions.

The buzz on the street is that dedicated scanners are going away now 
that we have 24 and 36 MP DSLRs. Most of the people doing document 
imaging are using DSLRs or mirrorless digital cameras these days, it seems.

I expect the Sprout to be expensive and a way that HP is trying to go 
against Mac and also create a high-value product that will rise above 
commodity PCs.

The integration may intrigue some, I don't feel it's necessary for many 
of us, but it certainly looked fast to use.

Thanks!

Cheers,

Richard



On 2014-11-04 8:34 PM, Tom Fine wrote:
> The HP Sprout:
> http://sprout.hp.com/
>
> Of course they don't give the full scanning-area dimensions, only "20
> inches wide", but I noted that the surface cover sheet sold seperately
> is 22" by 16", indicating to me that it also covers the border areas,
> and thus the scanning area is likely 20" by 14". If that is the case,
> this may be a very quick and convenient way to scan LP covers, magazine
> pages, book text, etc. Flatbed scanners are great, but time consuming. I
> say this as one who has scanned hundreds of LP covers the old-fashioned
> way.
>
> One thing I wondered about right off is, how much does ambient light
> effect the scan quality? Must you have exactly-placed light sources as
> you would using a camera stand (the big turnoff about that method).? Or,
> does this thing have some sort of system where it ignores ambient light
> and only uses whatever light frequency is put out by its LEDs?
>
> I'm also not clear how it's a "3D scanner," as the way its demonstrated
> in the video indiates nothing like full 3D scanner functionality (360
> degree scanning, fractal modelling, etc).
>
> -- Tom Fine
-- 
Richard L. Hess                   email: [log in to unmask]
Aurora, Ontario, Canada                             647 479 2800
http://www.richardhess.com/tape/contact.htm
Quality tape transfers -- even from hard-to-play tapes.