corposant wrote:
Here's some more praise for Peter - first is a color negative lab scan - the sky and the foreground can't be accessed by the lab. The drum scan brings back the sky and the trees dramatically:
"Peter, what kind of Howtek are you using? How much time does it take you to set up, perform and clean up after one scan? "
I have both a Howtek 7500 and an 8000, but the 7500 has a problem right now so it won't scan. The scan area of the 8000 is 10x12 inches while the 7500 goes all the way to 18x24 on the larger drum size - there are both 4" and 8" diameter drums for that, but the resolution on the large drum is limited to 2500 ppi while the small drum is double that. The 8000 scanner goes all the way to 8000 ppi over the entire drum.
If you're only mounting one or two pieces of film, it takes maybe a minute or two to mount, maybe another two minutes to do an overview scan of the entire drum and then a preview scan of the actual frame or frames you're going to scan. The final scan time really depends on the film size and the resolution. A 4000 ppi scan from 35mm is about seven minutes while an 8000 ppi scan is four times that.
The amount of post scan cleanup really depends on both the resolution and the condition of the film. A lot of old film comes to me with dirt and dust embedded in the emulsion, with no easy way to get it out. Even newly processed film can be dirty as well, so the cleanup time can range from five minutes to several hours. Mike's X-Pan shot from Death Valley took maybe seven or eight minutes and was cleaned with PEC-12 prior to scanning.
I mounted as many as thirty slides on a drum at once, and obviously, that takes a while to tape, apply mounting fluid and overlay material. Once you define each scan area, they are all loaded into a scanning queue where each prescan can have individual parameters applied. After every prescan is made and the parameters applied, there is a Scan All command, after which, you can walk away and do something else while all of your scans are being made.
Strangely enough, the best scanning software for this scanner is the old Trident, written by the people at ColorByte who now spend their time on the ImagePrint RIP. Unfortunately, they stopped software development about a dozen years ago, which means that that scanner still runs on Mac OS 9.2.2. Not a big deal, just a little odd this many years later.
Thank you for taking the time to write this, that is very interesting.
I guess many people who still shoot film harbour a secret dream of owning and using a drum scanner one day. At least, I do. I guess it will have to wait though, since I have little disposable income, time or space
"Thank you for taking the time to write this, that is very interesting.
I guess many people who still shoot film harbour a secret dream of owning and using a drum scanner one day. At least, I do. I guess it will have to wait though, since I have little disposable income, time or space"
When I first got into it around fourteen years ago (I think), it was really so I could afford to do my own high quality scans. As a commercial photographer, I was always getting scans from print/prepress shops here in L.A., and what I noticed, especially after reading the first couple Margulis books, was that those scans were less than stellar, often grossly oversharpened, CMYK only, and white and black points never even in the ballpark. I started going and supervising the scan sessions in order to get the scans closer to what I was looking for and basically save the time of having to have film re-scanned. Those supervising sessions, even though I didn't understand the software or the hardware got me interested in my own scanner, and I soon found a Howtek 4500 for about $12K, used.
I really just bought that to do my own scans, figuring that it would pay for itself over time, having thirty years or so of images I wanted to go through. Well, as soon as one of my clients heard about it, they hired me to do a big scanning job for Memorex that paid for the scanner in four months. In the meantime, I was giving feedback to Colorbyte about the software, finding bugs and suggesting workflow improvements and getting a new build every couple of weeks. Some of the bugs are still there, but once you know about them, it's not anything that hurts the process. It was that early intensive work troubleshooting and sending them feedback that really helped me understand the software and how to get the most out of it.
Owning a drum scanner is kinda like having an old tube guitar amp - actually more than you know, as the sensors in the scanner are actual vacuum tubes and are about the same size and shape as many of the tubes used in audio. I wouldn't discourage anyone from picking one up as they're quite affordable, but just be aware there is a definite learning curve. The sad thing is that I think we're down to just two companies left selling new drum scanners - Aztek and ICG, and I know the number of units is pitifully small.
