Digital BW, The Print

Peter De Smidt wrote:

> I just looked at an old Screen drum scanner that was 8 feets
> long and used a ton of electricity. Eventhough the price was right, I
> decided against it. Moving and housing it were too daunting.
>
> -Peter

There are a few classes of drum scanners. The old classics like the Hell 
3400 weigh like six tons and require floors to be reinforced. They have 
huge scanning capability (about the size of a page from the NYTimes). 
Dupont/Crosfield made units somewhat smaller, but still took up a lot of 
space and like the Hells required a rigger with a hoist to set them in 
place. The really big scanners often require 220 VAC, sometimes three 
phase power. They often need their own A/C system dedicated to the room 
they are in.

The only units I would direct photographers to are the "desktop" and 
"deskside" models that were entry level machines aimed at smaller 
service bureaus (Screen made some of these too, like the DT-S1045AI). 
These units have much smaller drums and thus much smaller scanning areas 
(usually good for originals in the 36 x 28 cm range (14x11 inch) and 
smaller of course). They typically weigh less than 100Kg (220 pounds) 
and are smaller than 120w x 60d x 45t cm (48w x 24d x 18t inches). That 
is, they take up the *entire* desktop. They do plug into standard wall 
outlets. They don't require a huge amount of extra A/C.

The best part though is that the software that runs the smaller scanners 
often was designed to be more versatile. That is, these desktop machines 
were often just as good with negatives as they were with trannies and 
with scanning prints. At least this is true of the Optronics scanners 
using the latest (still in production) version of ColorRight software. I 
hear that Aztek's DPL is excellent with negatives also. Screen also had 
a software module that you could buy for negatives IIRC. I'm not sure of 
the status of the ScanMates or the ICGs software.

In any case, I suspect you made the right decision. Just like I did with 
the IBM 3090 a used computer reseller offered me for $100 back in the 
1980s. It would have completely filled my living room, and I have no 
idea where I would have put the twin water chillers necessary to cool it 
(or the string of disk drives). I reluctantly took a pass, and heard 
later that they melted it for the gold in the PWBs. Oh well ;-)
--
Bruce Watson