[LargeFormat] Chopped in the Landy for a Microtek Scanner!
Clive Warren
largeformat@f32.net
Thu Jan 18 00:22:06 2001
Well,
I finally bit the bullet and sold my old short wheel base Land Rover
to fund a new Microtek Scanmaker 4 which has a trannie tray for
scanning up to and including 8x10. There was a certain amount of
sadness to see the Landy go as it had been a member of my family for
the last 13 years. The new owner is delighted and it has gone to a
good home.....
The Microtek scanner is still sitting in its box and waiting for me
to grab enough time to make some space and buy additional RAM for the
hosting machine. Have read good reports about the scanners on the web
and maybe some of you have a similar model....
The purchase was driven by the cost of scanning 4x5s here at the
local pro. lab - it is now about $25 a scan. It won't take long
before the scanner pays for itself. My bet is that for the normal
scan to Fuji photo print at the lab they also use a flat bed scanner
as the file sizes they use are less than 30Mb. A drum scan would
probably be a lot bigger if they were to go to the trouble of setting
it all up.
As for the quality of the scans, the web is the first priority so no
problems there. Will also probably be printing out on the Epson
Stylus inkjet and have had very good results from that even with
scans from photographic prints on a cheapo scanner. Cibachrome it
ain't but this method will at least allow a good assessment of the
print potential should I decide to pay the lab to do a pro. job.
If any of you do use the Microtek you may also have had a similar
package to mine - it came bundled with SilverFast scanning software.
This application is supposed to be the bees knees - will have to wait
and see. Anyway, if anyone is using Silverfast and/or a Microtek
scanner maybe you have some experiences or advice to pass on....
--
All the best,
Clive Warren http://www.f32.net
Large Format travel and stock photography