15 Feb
2002
15 Feb
'02
6:41 a.m.
On Fri, 15 Feb 2002, Tom Uban wrote:
I would have to agree with Brian's comments.
Piecing together the
various panels to create one page would be a pain. The slide scanners
are not that cheap either though and might be comparable to the
anacomp fiche scanners in price.
What does the Anacomp go for? The really nice Nikon Super Coolscan
8000 ED runs about $3000. Lower end models (limited to 35mm scanning)
can run less than $900. They aren't *cheap* exactly, but it might be
worthwhile to someone with mixed photography and vintage computing
hobbies.
I like the backlighter idea as well, but I've a feeling the resolution
wouldn't be adequate for microfiche.
Another possibility would be to setup a projection system to enlarge the
microfiche, and then capture that. For example, you might be able to
put the fiche in a photographic enlarger and project the image onto a
flatbed scanner. I guess this would be kind of like a backlighter with
magnification. Another possibility would be to project the enlarged
image onto a white opaque surface (i.e. a wall). Then use a tripod
mounted digital camera to record the projected image.
In either case, you take the resulting images and process them to be
high contrast b&w TIFFs for incorporating into a PDF file or for
further processing with OCR software.
-brian.