[sane-devel] Fwd: drum scanners or high-end flatbeds: any hope?

[m. allan noah]

should have sent this to the list...

allan


---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: m. allan noah <kitno455 at gmail.com>
Date: Sat, Nov 7, 2009 at 9:55 AM
Subject: Re: [sane-devel] drum scanners or high-end flatbeds: any hope?
To: David Heinrich <dh003i at gmail.com>


On Fri, Nov 6, 2009 at 11:37 PM, David Heinrich <dh003i at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> On Fri, Nov 6, 2009 at 8:28 PM, m. allan noah <kitno455 at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> On Fri, Nov 6, 2009 at 6:38 PM, David Heinrich <dh003i at gmail.com> wrote:
>> > Ok, thanks to the suggestion by Allan, I'm e-mailing with this
>> > suggestion...I may be able to eventually buy one of these high-end
>> > flat-beds
>> > or drum-scanners (that is, high-end compared to the Epson V750, not
>> > high-end
>> > as in the $80k Aztek Premier) and have it shipped to a developer.
>> >
>> > Developers, what are you suggestions for what may be a good thing to
>> > look
>> > for? The Howtek 4500 drum seems to be commonly available, along with the
>> > Creo Eversmart flatbed series (I think Creo is now owned by Kodak).
>> > However,
>> > even the brand name of these companies is not mentioned on the
>> > sane-project
>> > website. Of the high-end flatbed or drum scanners listed on the Large
>> > Format
>> > scanner comparison page, only the Microtek brand are mentioned on the
>> > sane
>> > page (and not any of the scanners relevant to me scanning in 4x5 inch
>> > and
>> > 8x10 inch film). Someone on LF forum suggested, however, that it might
>> > be
>> > easier to adapt a driver for a low-end scanner of the same brand to a
>> > high-end flatbed or drum (by high-end, I mean pro scanners with real
>> > resolutions of 2500 dpi or higher, not marketing hype of 6400 dpi).
>> >
>> > So, any suggestions?
>>
>> Required:
>> 1. It should use some standard port (i.e. SCSI).
>> 2. It should have a complete copy of the windows software and any
>> dongles required to run it.
>>
>> Extremely helpful:
>> 1. protocol documents from the maker.
>> 2. other user documents
>> 3. any calibration targets
>>
>> I doubt this class of machines will really share any brains with their
>> cheaper brothers, so don't worry about sticking with a particular
>> brand. The SCSI protocol is more likely to enforce consistency than
>> the name plate.
>
>
> Thank you very much for the information. I'll consider that when looking at
> what comes up for the drum-scanners in the future.
>
> In the meantime, the support for the Epson 4990, V700, and V750 is listed as
> "good", which is defined as all necessary functionality being there, but
> some advanced functionality missing. How would one find out what
> functionality is missing? (might it be the ICE, which "removes" scratches
> via I think an IR light detecting them).

Most scanner 'features' like ICE on consumer grade stuff are actually
software features. It is a safe bet that those things won't work with
sane. In the case of IR, the current sane API only supports RGB data,
but there is a (slow) move underway to extend the API for IR use. The
epson2 backend already exposes a prototype version of this support, if
you are willing to build from source. It is not supported by all
front-ends yet. Actually doing something with the IR data is an
exercise for the reader :)

allan

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"The truth is an offense, but not a sin"



-- 
"The truth is an offense, but not a sin"