Today the wife and I went shopping at Fred Meyer's, a Northwest chain department store. While there I was checking out photo stuff and saw this woman making copies of her prints on a commercial flatbed scanner. Wow! Excellent quality, so much better than my (old) scanner. What are your experiences with new ones? Who makes the best, for the money? My photos are of much better quality than my scanners produce for the net. I'd like to be able to present them better.
Its all about tuning. From picture to picture i've always had to fiddle with and adjust the scanner to get the best resilts. You can get some good pictures even from a cheap scanner. And I second this..."You can't beat HP..."
Jim - I have a Plustec Optic Pro U12B flat bed. I makes excellent photo copies and does very well with text as well. Also has an OCR funtion which allows the scanned text to be edited. I can't remember what I paid for it, but it had to be "reasonable" for me to buy it. I'd rank the Plustec right up there with the Prime Film 35mm / slide scanner.
I have an old AGFA flatbed scanner. While it has OCR function, it doesn't print. Maybe in the future I'll be able to afford an "upgrade." Bill- Which Prime Film scanner do you have? I'd be delighted just to get an 1800 some day. Boxcab E50
Ken, Bill and I both have the 1800u and are happy with it. My flatbed is a Mustek. After looking at what I have been doing, I scanned this image at over twice the resolution I usually do, and it is still under 100k in space. Does it look better? I think I just discovered another "duuuuhhh" being fooled into low res scanning for net posting.
The scan of 2816 looks fine to me. I've been looking at eBay for the 1800u. But so far, all the prices are right up there. No bargains to be had. And all the sellers seem to have a lot of negatives. Which scares me away. The search continues........ Boxcab E50
Jim - you scan looks great to me! Ken - I suspect those who have an 1800U are unhappy with it because they failed to read the instructions on how to use it. (Most of us men are prone to do such, ya'know ). I made mistakes and was sort of unhappy with it until I learned how to use it too.
I have a MicroTek flat bed scanner which can take up to legal-size paper. It also can scan negatives or slides up to 4x5 inches, with no special attachement. In addition, it can be used for making copies by feeding the image through my computer to my printer. I have used it for all the above functions and am very happy with it. Sorry, I don't have the model number handy here at work.
Bill- One aspect I worry about is shipping. How fragile are these? Delivery services in our area are a disaster. They treat packages like footballs. And have no troubles leaving them sitting in rain or snow..... Boxcab E50
Hey guys, here's a little experiment, now that I have discovered how I was misusing the flatbed. Got another roll of film back today that had the absolute last shot I got of 4449, just past the semaphore, with Kodachrome 200, Nikon N65. The first image was scanned from the negative on the Primefilm 1800, at 1800dpi, the second on the flatbed at 400 dpi. Both were shrunk to 640Xwhatever pixels using IRFanview, and sharpened. Both were brightened slightly to bring out the drivers. I added a little green to the neg scan. The neg scan produced a 69653byte file, the print scan a 94096byte file. Which one looks better? Forget the railfan's head in the lower left corner. Negative scan Print scan.
Well just based on personal preference, I like the negative scan. But that's because I like the warmer tones. I'm not saying it's technically better or anything. Now that your right up there with digitalized images, it's easy to crop out the head. Or if you have an advanced photo editor software, you should be able to erase the head and fill the space with ballast. I don't have the software or know how to do it, but I've seen the results. Beautiful shot, by the way. Regards Ed
As a part time graphic designer, I would agree - negative has better color to it (always will) - although you did do a good job with color correction! If you can use slide film, that also will improve your pics As for the head.... you can always color over it with the right program (Photoshop, etc) or just crop if you have the space to But if you're going to use the pics for web viewing, lower the resolution to 75 to save webspace (a computer will only show up to 72, so you really dont lose anything - I use the extra +3 just to be safe) [ 30. October 2004, 01:53: Message edited by: nscale_lover ]
same photos at 75dpi ( tad bit smaller - didnt know what the above dimentions were, so I guessed) 148K 180K
Mike Did you change the resolution of those shots on your computer and upload them again to railimages? Or is there an option on railimages to change resolution? I've seen the 'resizing' option, but thought that was just for width. Thanks Ed
Mike, now I'm confused. I always scanned my photos at 72 or so and was disappointed in how they looked. I think scanning them at a higher dpi, then downsizing the file produces better results, and that was the reason for my "discovery" that the flatbed could do much better, I just didn't let it! If those are file sizes listed for yours, at 72dpi, they are bigger than my originals, 69k and 94K. I guess I don't get the correlation between file size and resolution. Can you explain it? And Ed, thanks for the compliment on the photo. In case you missed it over on the 4449 trip thread, I really appreciated your input on that bridge into Sandpoint. Primo phot spot. Of course, I missed the train there, but will not in the future.
I prefer the top view. For the same reason as Ed described. Although the orange has almost a neon effect to it. I don't recall it being this brilliant, when I've chased her. Seems to distract a little. Boxcab E50
The negative scan is far better, Jim, though the sky looks a bit odd compared to the print's scan. The sharpening of the print's scan has made it a little too hard, IMO.
I agree with Mike I bought a microtec 4850 and save images to a jpg then I ll redo the file in a different proggy like PSP to sharpen and reduce file size................ Its the patience to play around a little with scans in other proggys which is a few minutes., no matter what scanner ya use............ Dave =)
