Scanning Fiche

On Sun, 6 Dec 1998, Zane H. Healy wrote: I don't know the answer, but I have some thoughts. There are now flatbed scanners with a separate slide/picture scan "tray" that pops out the front like a CD tray. Whether it is large enough for the fiche, I can't say. Does that stuff come in standard sizes? There is also an Artec ScanRom 4E, a miniature tray scanner (parallel port & Windows) for stuff like 4" x 6" drugstore photos. DPI is your biggest problem. Neither of these solutions exceeds 600 or 800 dpi, while with dedicated 35mm scanners, that number is supposedly the high 1,000 to the middle 2,000 per inch. Are we talking jpegs/pdfs or ocr? How low a dpi can one go? Keeping in mind that everything aimed at consumers seems to reward routine scanning at excessive dpi, one could probably live with 200 dpi, if desperate, perhaps less. Assuming that the fiche corresponds to a standard sheet of paper, then it is possible that a true scanner resolution of 600 or 800 dpi will net 75 dpi for the finished product. Not so hot but might be workable. I could suggest optically blowing it up via a photgraphic enlarger and then scanning the enlargement, but there is still the problem of cutting to fit and the whole process would be time consuming. What about projecting it from the microfiche reader (either directly or using the screen) into something like a camcorder and then capturing as stills via a live feed? I assume there is a legitimate commercial way of scanning microfiche, but I suspect it requires a significant outlay of money. -- Stephen Dauphin