Scanning Microfiche (was: VT131 needs keyboard help) - test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

31 Jan 2002

Andreas Freiherr wrote:
...
 Even if you were using a true 1200dpi device, you would
end up with less
than 30dpi after blowing up the image 1:42 back to it's original size.
Sure, that's not what we want. 
I've seen fiche scanners available
commercially (I just did a google search
when this came up a few months ago).

All the ones I found seemed to be $10K+ ...

...
 Some years ago, a friend of mine managed to get a
couple of frames
printed off these fiches, but the results weren't too good: poor
contrast was the main problem. If you'd scan these prints, the results
would certainly be unreadable. 
Back in the early 1990s, I had access to
a fiche printer - i.e. something that would
print an A4 page of whatever the fiche reader
was looking at. No automation (if you
wanted the whole fiche as a set of pages
you had to line it up yourself and hit a button
for each page).

That produced reasonable quality copy.
If I still have any around I'll try to scan
a sample page.

I have no idea how much this thing cost 
but it was about the same volume as
three or maybe four 21" monitors.

Antonio