Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Fast scanner recommendation

This is topic Fast scanner recommendation in forum Film-Yak at Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE.

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Posted by Brad Miller (Member # 2) on 08-06-2002, 05:35 AM:

The last flatbed scanner I bought was a Hewlett Packard which *at the time* was a high end model and made excellent scans. This was perhaps 3 years ago. Technology has improved and the thing will no longer connect. (Not that connecting through a parallel port was a good thing in the first place.)

Can someone recommend a good scanner that is FAST? This HP scanned pathetically slow...and then it had to transmit it through the printer port. I am looking for a USB scanner that can scan a page in under 5 seconds at high resolution. Does this exist?

Another requirement is that the scanner needs to be able to scan color and black and white. Scanning manuals in color bloats the pdf file sizes, so that is not an option for simple text scans.

Thanks in advance for any tips and leads.

Posted by Jerry Clark (Member # 1342) on 08-06-2002, 10:15 AM:

Brad, I don't think there is a scanner that can scan that fast at high resolution. I have a HP4470c and it is great. I use my scanner to scan photos for retouching and editing. At high resolution, 600dpi and above, it does scan slow. It has to scan slow to get more information in the final file. This is my 4th scanner and by far the best. It is USB.

Posted by Adam Martin (Member # 641) on 08-06-2002, 10:54 AM:

I'm looking, too, but I haven't really gone shopping yet. I just replaced my digital camera because the old one wouldn't work with Windows XP.

Let me know what you end up with, Brad.

Posted by Steve Guttag (Member # 268) on 08-06-2002, 10:58 AM:

Well if you get a Macintosh.....and sit on the iToilet...

Steve

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"Old projectionists never die, they just changeover!"

Posted by Randy Stankey (Member # 64) on 08-06-2002, 12:17 PM:

Both Microtek and Epson make scanners with FireWire interface. That would be about as fast as things can go, nowadays. The rest would be up to the speed of the mechanism/electronics.

I would bet that a good FW scanner could download a 8X10 color photo in around 30 seconds... maybe less.

Posted by Stephen Furley (Member # 1277) on 08-06-2002, 01:40 PM:

quote:
Can someone recommend a good scanner that is FAST? This HP scanned pathetically slow...and then it had to transmit it through the printer port. I am looking for a USB scanner that can scan a page in under 5 seconds at high resolution. Does this exist?

Brad, what type of material are you scanning, text, line drawings, photos? What resolution do you need? What page sise? Where are the scans going, web page, ink jet printer, laser printer, photo setter? Do you need to scan film, or just paper? How much do you want to spend? Will you be doing enough to need a document feeder?

Unless you want to spend a lot, the HP or Epson models are probably about the best. I would say the HP ones are slightly more robust, but the Epson ones make a slightly better job of photos; it's the same with their printers.

We have a large number of HPs of various models at work, and I have an Epson 1640SU, now replaced by an updated model, at home. Both work well.

If you are scanning paper, you probably do not need more than 600 dpi, unless you are scanning something very small, of very high quility, and are enlarging it a lot. For scanning film you need more, my Epson does 1600 dpi, proper resolution, not interpolated, which is fine for 5x4 and medium format film, but a bit low for 35mm, I have a film scanner for that. Take a look at www.britishtransportfilms.co.uk go to the 'filmstrips' section, scroll down to the 'B' titles, and you will find that one has a link on it. Almost all of the frames on this strip were scanned on my Epson at 1600 dpi. because I did not want to cut the original strip to get it into the film scanner. A few problem frames were optically copied onto a dup neg, and then done on the film scanner. These were 18x24 frames, but with a wide black border, the actual pictures were only about 20mm wide, flatbed scanners are not ideal for this type of work, but they can do it. 5x4 scans are very good, I would send you one, but they are close to 150 MB. The text of the lecturer's notes which accompany the film strip was scanned on the same machine, and OCRd. There were only about two errors in the whole thing.

My scanner will do an A4 page at 300 dpi in about five seconds, but higher resolutions take longer.

Just about all desktop scanners now have USB, the HP ones tend to have parallel as well, Epsons tend to be USB only, some of the previous modles like mine had SCSI as well, but they seem to have dropped this on the latest ones. USB will be fine, unless you are doing a lot of very large scans, when SCSI or Firewire would be better. What operating system are you running? Windows NT4 does not support USB, 2000 and XP are not very happy with parallel, I would avoid parallel anyway, Macintosh has supported USB since system 8.something.

Scanners tend to be replaced by new models quite frequently, but the latest models now are not much different to the previous ones, a couple of years ago progress was more rapid.

Sone scanners are very thin, only about 25mm thick, these use a somewhat different technology, and I don't find them as good. I would avoid them unless you have a desparate need to carry one around in a briefcase.

Hope this helps, it's difficult to recommend a particular model without knowing more about what you want to use it for.

Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 08-06-2002, 05:56 PM:

I just bought a new Espon Perfection 2450 Photo model. It works pretty well. 2400dpi X 4800dpi optical resolution. 3.2 optical density from the transparancy adapter (only bad thing is the adapter is kinda small). The scanner offers both IEEE-1394 Firewire and USB 2.0 connections. I installed a USB 2.0 card in my machine without any problems.

For scanning reflective material, this scanner is really fast. It rockets through prescans faster than any flatbed I've seen. And it captures the higher res scans really fast as well. I don't know about 5 seconds since I've never timed it. But something like the page out of a manual captured at 300dpi or less won't take long at all.

Scanning negatives and slides is a bit on the slow side (if you scan at 2400, 3200 or 4800 res), and you'll have to fart around with color adjustments some. But it still works pretty well, noticeably better than my retired $1,300 Linotype-Hell Saphir SCSI scanner.

Overall, a very good value for a scanner in the $300-$400 price range.

Posted by Leo Enticknap (Member # 534) on 08-07-2002, 02:23 AM:

Further to Stephen's post, does anyone know of a film scanner that would sit between the plates on a flatbed winding bench and enable 16mm and 35mm film to be scanned without cutting it?

Posted by Stephen Furley (Member # 1277) on 08-07-2002, 03:27 AM:

[QUOTE}Further to Stephen's post, does anyone know of a film scanner that would sit between the plates on a flatbed winding bench and enable 16mm and 35mm film to be scanned without cutting it?[/QUOTE]

I do not know of any film scanner as such, but my Epson flatbed with the film attachment will do it. You do not need to thread the end of film through it, you just drape the film over the scanner glass. You would not be able to use the film holders which come with the scanner, they are not very good anyway, but you can fix the edges of the film to the glass with small pieces of splicing tape.

The filmstrip scan that I put the link to in my previous post was done this way.

I will try to get inserted below a scan from a film which, while much older, 1938 v 1951, is of better qualitiy. This is a reduced resolution jpeg, good enough for on-screen use, but not for printing.

If you are interested, let me know, and I will e-mail you a copy of the original full resolution (1600 dpi) tiff file. It is 1.63 MB.

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Please insert Title frame.jpg here.

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Posted by Paul G. Thompson (Member # 655) on 08-07-2002, 04:35 AM:

I have to get a new one, also. The one I have as one of those $99.00 sledge hammer specials by Visioneer. It was as slow as molasses running out a bottle in a North Dakota Winter, but it did do a good job for me most of the time.

However, I am now using Windows 2000 Professional and when I tried to load the drivers for the scanner, Windows 2000 flashed a message that basically said, "Get a life, dude."

I looked on Visioneer's website. No drivers are available for my specific model to make it run under Windows 2000.

Posted by Mark Gulbrandsen (Member # 72) on 08-07-2002, 07:25 AM:

Personally, buy the sheapest model that meets your needs. Generally scanners do not hvae a really long life when they get hard use. I don't think speed has gotten that much faster over the past 3 or 4 years. I bought a cheapo ACER scanner(USB)that also does transparencies up to 5X7 or so. I'm able to make nice scans of my 4X5 transparencies and negatives, where at the lab the drum scanner cost me 37.50 per scan for 4X5 and the scan filled a 100mb ZIP! Yea, the drum is alot higher resolution but this thing was on close out at Office Max for 99.00 and makes bette than acceptable scans for internet work. 4X5 scans at full resolution generate about a 15mb file.
Mark