Scanner recommendation

  • Thread starter Thread starter Thomas Brandt
  • Start date Start date
Thanks, CSM1, but both these links speak to color photos. I need a 1200
ppi scanner for line art, B&W bitmaps.

Charlie says

------------
You can't get better than 600 ppi resolution on paper documents with
any scanner, no matter what the states resolution is.
------------

He also says

------------
This assertion
is based on the fact that a printed document "contains" no more than
about 300 ppi of information.
------------

I don't believe this is true. I believe line art should be scanned at
1200 ppi minimum for 100% reproduction. Color and grayscale should,
quite appropriately, be scanned at 300 ppi for 100% reproduction.

Thomas
Click to expand...

I now see that I must "back off" from that statement.

There are certainly some "documents" that contain more than 600 ppi of
information. (I even alluded to that in one of my posts, indicating
that a second scanner might be needed for high resolution scans).

However, based on my experience, there really is not much, if
anything, to be gained by scanning at the higher resolution "for most
documents".

I have personally scanned several genealogy books to include on our
Family Association CD, (scanning to tiff files and then converting to
PDF for storage on the CD). I experimented with different scan
resolutions, and found that 300 ppi gave excellent results, quick
scans, and good results on those few scans that I converted to text
using OCR (my OCR program recommends 300 ppi scans). Now genealogy
books are usually self published, and the printing is admittedly not
the highest quality.

I use a relatively cheap sheet fed scanner made by "Brother" for
scanning books that I can disassemble, and a "better" Epson photo
scanner (3170) to check out scanning at higher resolutions. The Epson
has scanning settings up to 12800 ppi, which is obviously overkill for
anything. Optical resolution is probably about 1200, which is not
needed for anything I scan (I have a Nikon film scanner for slides and
negatives).

I now admit that your requirements are special. And also still
maintain that my recomendation would still apply for the majority of
people.
 
As Charile Hoffpauir says, your situation is special.

You are correct in scanning Line art or B&W prints, you often do need the
higher resolution to resolve the fine lines.

There are plenty of scanners that will do 2400 to 4800 PPI on line art.

My lowly Canon Canoscan 8400F (Replaced by 8800F) will do up to 3200 DPI on
line art.

I don't know of any home or small business scanners with a ADF that will do
that much resolution on a stack of documents.

These are high priced commercial scanners and they are only 600 DPI.
http://www.fujitsu.com/us/services/computing/peripherals/scanners/production/

Kodak has some flatbed accessories that will do 1200 DPI.
http://graphics.kodak.com/docimagin...0_Scanner/Specifications/Spec_Sheet/index.htm
 
CSM1 said:
I don't know of any home or small business scanners with a ADF that will do
that much resolution on a stack of documents.
Click to expand...

Actually I need the ADF only for copying (or maybe for scanning to OCR).
300 dpi is fine for either one. I need the regular flatbed (with the ADF
out of the way) for scanning photos (300 dpi) and hi res line art (1200
dpi).

Thomas
 
Thomas Brandt said:
Actually I need the ADF only for copying (or maybe for scanning to OCR).
300 dpi is fine for either one. I need the regular flatbed (with the ADF
out of the way) for scanning photos (300 dpi) and hi res line art (1200
dpi).

Thomas
Click to expand...

You may need two scanners then, one with a ADF and one flatbed.

The flatbed scanners are very easy, just about everybody that makes a
flatbed scanner has 1200 DPI or above.

I personally use a Canon Canoscan Flatbed that also has a built in
transparency scanner.
As I said before, it does up to 3200 DPI.

The new model of Canon Canoscan 8800F is 4800 DPI.
http://www.usa.canon.com/consumer/controller?act=ModelInfoAct&fcategoryid=120&modelid=15561


At NewEgg.com
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16838111015

NewEgg.com, scanners with ADF. Prices starts around $235.00 for a PlusTek.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...EPA=0&Order=BESTMATCH&Description=scanner+adf
 
Actually I need the ADF only for copying (or maybe for scanning to OCR).
300 dpi is fine for either one. I need the regular flatbed (with the ADF
out of the way) for scanning photos (300 dpi) and hi res line art (1200
dpi).

Thomas
Click to expand...

refer to my original post, time stamped 1/23/09 5:04 PM.

I think my Brother MF (printer, scanner fax) is fine for ADF scans,
and the Epson 3170 is great for high resolution scans.

I don't know how to get it all in one device.
 
Thanks, everyone, for the help.

In the end, I decided to go for cheap. I dug up software for my
8-year-old Agfa Duoscan T1200. I played with SCSI boards until I found
one that worked. I bought an unused ADF for the Duoscan on eBay ($90). I
installed Irfanview for its Copy Shop function. I'll live without the
direct Print button on the scanner. The resolution has been good enough
(I think it's really 600x1200, not 1200x1200, but I'm not sure).

Thomas
 
You should have read my post from 1/24/09 at 22:56.

$90 is WAY more than you could have gotten an HP 5490C (or a 5470C with
ADF) for. After writing that I looked on E-Bay, and right now there are
not any really cheap ones. But I've bought a number of them over the
past 2 years for under $20 (INCLUDING the ADF).
 
Barry said:
You should have read my post from 1/24/09 at 22:56.
Click to expand...

I did read your post. You should have read my reply. The cheapest one I
found was $105, and missing some cables.

Thomas
 
I agree that at the moment there are not any cheap ones on E-Bay.
That's E-Bay; you can get it right now, or you can be patient and
[usually] get it cheap. Sometimes, however, you can't do both. Getting
the best deals takes patience.
 
Re: "I thought USB was faster than Firewire and SCSI? Last time I
checked USB was 480Mbps Firewire was 400"

It is, but those numbers are only the instantaneous rates when data is
being transmitted continuously. There are two problems with this that
make Firewire actually faster than USB:

1. Firewire is able to do continuous transmission for a greater
percentage of the time than USB.

2. A greater percentage of the data transmitted in a firewire system is
actual data to be exchanged, vs. control information that is necessary
for the transfer, but that is "overhead" rather than useful user data.

In fact, Firewire has a higher bottom line efficiency than USB. SCSI is
FAR slower (like an order of magnitude slower).

[BTW, it's only USB 2.0 that is 480Mbps; USB 1.x is only 12Mbps]
 
In <[email protected]>, on 02/02/2009
at 01:33 AM, Barry Watzman <[email protected]> said:


Re: "I thought USB was faster than Firewire and SCSI? Last time I
checked USB was 480Mbps Firewire was 400"
Click to expand...
It is, but those numbers are only the instantaneous rates when data is
being transmitted continuously. There are two problems with this that
make Firewire actually faster than USB:
Click to expand...
1. Firewire is able to do continuous transmission for a greater
percentage of the time than USB.
Click to expand...
2. A greater percentage of the data transmitted in a firewire system is
actual data to be exchanged, vs. control information that is necessary
for the transfer, but that is "overhead" rather than useful user data.
Click to expand...
In fact, Firewire has a higher bottom line efficiency than USB. SCSI is
FAR slower (like an order of magnitude slower).
Click to expand...


SCSI work is off-loaded to the drive. If windows wasn't a crap design,
the hardware would be doing the work instead of software.




[BTW, it's only USB 2.0 that is 480Mbps; USB 1.x is only 12Mbps]
Click to expand...
 
In message <[email protected]> Barry Watzman
In fact, Firewire has a higher bottom line efficiency than USB. SCSI is
FAR slower (like an order of magnitude slower).
Click to expand...

You seem to be a bit confused about SCSI. Modern flavours of SCSI
(Ultra-320) are around 320MB/s, which is *far* more bandwidth then
Firewire's 400/800Mb/s.

Both protocols are relatively low overhead.
 
In message <[email protected]>
In <[email protected]>, on 02/02/2009
at 01:33 AM, Barry Watzman <[email protected]> said:









SCSI work is off-loaded to the drive. If windows wasn't a crap design,
the hardware would be doing the work instead of software.
Click to expand...

What are you babbling about? If the hardware and drivers are capable,
Windows is quite happy to let the drive do whatever it is capable of
doing.

If you've only used an old flavour of SCSI then Firewire will be much
faster by comparison. The upper end of parallel SCSI is around 320MB/s,
which is obviously much faster then Firewire, even Firewire-800 is
noticeably slower then SCSI-320, although the point is relatively moot
since few drives on the market can burst above FW800, and as far as I
know none can sustain speeds to saturate FW800.

If he meant to say "USB is FAR slower" then the comment might make more
sense.
 
This is a discussion group on SCANNERS, and the questions arose relative
to scanners.

In truth, for scanners, it's almost irrelevant. SCSI, USB and Firewire
are all more than adequate. Now if we were talking about terabyte hard
drives on network servers, things might be different.
 
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