Dick,
Search the Olympus list archives first of all. There's been a lot on
scanners.
These sites have good explanations:
http://www.scanjet.hp.com/shopping/index.htm
http://www.how2scan.com/what_is_scanner/index.htm
Basically you scan at up to 600 dots per inch with a flat bed. That's great
for fair sized things like 4X6 or 8X10 prints. If you want to scan large
(1-5/8, 2-1/4, post card size, 2X3, 4X5) transparencies, negative or
positive, you want a flat bed with an adapter for transparency capability.
Film scanners scan at about 1700 dots per inch to 2800 dots per inch and
handle 35mm and like sized film.
Remember, the input is effectively limited by the dots per inch of your
output device (about 70 dpi for the web, 300 or so for most ink-jet
printers). Also, the more square inches total, and the higher the scan rate,
the bigger the file. Don't overwhelm your hard drive or memory capacity.
Besides, how will you archive your scans? The common Zip disk is only 100MB,
and a CD is about 600 or so MB, if you've got a CD writer.
Right now SCSI is faster than parallel, (USB is coming fast, but may not
have all the bugs worked out quite yet) and SCSI won't interfere with your
printer, but you've got to get the SCSI card and cable.
http://www.scsifaq.org/
And the big kicker is that anything you get will be (like all stuff in a
time of transition) obsolete in three years or so. Oh yes, off-topic, Caere:
http://www.caere.com/ makes the best OCR software.
And finally, price is never proportional to quality for anything. You've got
to do your homework, unless you've got a bottomless money source, like the
government which can always raise our taxes. Using the other guy's scanner
is good way to get started and learn. If you've got to buy, search the web
thoroughly, study intensively, ask around, then think about it 'til the next
paycheck, and don't spend until you can pay cash.
Nick Smoliga
smoliga@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
SvT TF12 - Investment Projects
931.454.6947
1103 Avenue B
Arnold AFB, TN 37389-1400
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Dirk Wright [SMTP:wright@xxxxxxxxxxxx]
> Sent: Thursday, November 18, 1999 9:11 AM
> To: olympus@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Subject: [OM] scanners for dummies
>
> Um, I have a dummy type question: which is better, flatbed or film type
> scanner? Why? The flatbeds are really low price now, the film types are
> more
> expensive. Is the added cost proportional to any added quality?
> --
> Be OS!
>
> Dirk Wright
> Psychiatrists say that one out of four people are mentally ill. Check
> three friends. If they're OK, you're it.
>
>
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