 |
 |
For me, the key reason why I'll never totally abandon scanners is "the maw." This the Ricoh copier/scanner/printer we have networked at my office. It's cheap to lease, prints up to 12x18 in good color, and has a reliable document feeder. An example of where this was a great benefit was an AES project spearheaded by Jay McKnight to scan a couple of years of the Journal that for whatever reason weren't in the CD-ROM collection and weren't issued as PDFs to subscribers. I was sent these issues with the left edges (binding) cut off. I fed them into "the maw" and could set-and-forget scanning, simply re-loading "the maw" with each issue. I think I had one misfeed in two years worth of issues. You just can't do that with a camera. My main interest in the camera is for larger-than-scannable documents. I'm also interested to know if that HP device is faster than a scanner with equally good results. I wonder if the organizers of ARSC 2015 could ask HP to send a salesman and demo that thing in the literature/display room? -- Tom Fine ----- Original Message ----- From: "Richard L. Hess" <[log in to unmask]> To: <[log in to unmask]> Sent: Wednesday, November 05, 2014 1:08 PM Subject: Re: [ARSCLIST] potentially interesting new computer/scanner concept > On 2014-11-05 12:05 PM, Tom Fine wrote: >> >> I wonder if it's possible to rig up a mechanism whereby a digital camera >> "flies" over large >> documents like posters or schematics and uses built-in panorama software >> to stitch the segments >> together? The segments should stitch easily due to rigging a mechanism >> where the camera is kept at a >> static height and static vertical angle to the document, moving on a >> controlled horizontal path. > > Hi, Tom, > > A friend (Christopher Campbell) has a camera stand in his basement that goes from floor to > ceiling. He built it out of aluminum extrusions and stuff. He also uses four studio strobes and he > found someone had carefully worked out the angles. He gets within less than a half stop difference > in illumination. > > From what I read on the Nikon DSLR mailing list I'm on, it seems that the copying that the people > there are doing is mostly done with vertical images and horizontal lens axis alignment. > > They also do this with transparencies. I'm a lone voice there in favor of scanners. Throughput is > the name of their game. > > Current photo processing software (Lightroom and Photoshop are the two applications I use) have > simple perspective correction. Leave enough "air" around the image if you're going to do that. > Lightroom's is especially nice. I use it frequently to correct horizon lines. > > As to your blurry photographs, there are image stabilization lenses. In fact the two lenses that > cover almost all my shooting these days both employ that feature. My son Robert's new Samsung > Galaxy S5 has image stabilization built into the phone--too rich for my blood, I think I'll get an > S4 for half the price. > > The book scanners that use two DSLRs seem to have all their geometry worked out. > > Have you seen the page at AmericanRadioHistory.COM? I'm sending him Neil Muncy's old Allied Radio > catalogs (he's paying shipping). There is also a site > http://www.alliedcatalogs.com/catalogs_main.html > > Anyway, David Gleason's page at ARH on scanners is > http://www.americanradiohistory.com/Scanning-for-American-Radio-History.htm > > He discusses the Kodak (now Konica-Minolta, I think) 1200-series scanners, but his link is to the > 3000 series, as are the images. He has a link to the book scanner he uses. If he can cut a book, > the Kodak is his first choice. As an aside, I like my duplex Xerox/Visioneer page scanner. > > I've always thought the nice thing about scanners is that they have most of the error-prone areas > covered and can provide a good image with little work by an inexperienced operator. Photographing > images requires more and higher-end input to set up. > > Cheers, > > Richard > -- > 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. > >