Re: Flatbed scanners vs Pro Photo CDs
Re: Flatbed scanners vs Pro Photo CDs
- Subject: Re: Flatbed scanners vs Pro Photo CDs
- From: Joel <email@hidden>
- Date: Tue, 5 Dec 2000 18:52:41 -0600
tflash wrote:
<rant>This situation reminds me of the early transistor radios. They
often loudly touted the number of transistors inside, never
mentioning why more transistors should make it perform better than a
basic five-tube radio, and also never mentioning that many of those
transistors were not fully utilized, sometimes only used as diodes,
sometimes simply soldered to isolated pads on the printed circuit
board!</rant>
Tubes? Transistors?
Another question to ask: why are the specs of a $400 scanner so
similar to those of an $1,100 one? Definitely something fishy here.
Quality hardware and manufacturing practices are points to consider
here. It's a backwards/forwards game where sometimes you pay for
quality because it's there, sometimes someone offers the same
hardware components to more than one buyer. A manufacturer may try to
roll out overruns or stock which didn't pass muster on quality with
the buyer. Sometimes these refusals are merely esthetic (light green
circuit boards, etc.). So instead of heaving the overruns and
refusals, the manufacturer reroutes the stock to option buyers (like
Radio Shack). This can result in similarly featured devices - some so
similar the only difference is really the name, some so different the
only similarities are the specs on the individual components.
Jan Steinman wrote:
Unless you part with $400-$1100 on a whim, I'd recommend taking some
difficult material down and having it scanned on each. That's what I
did when I bought a film scanner, and the side-by-side results were
enlightening. For a distant second best evaluation, find some good
magazine reviews.
IMHO, the situation has gotten so bad that scanner specs are nearly
meaningless -- just like printer specs.
Which is good advice. After all, mechanical, digital and optical
interpolations are in the eye of the beholder.
--
joel johnstone
designtype
Winnipeg Manitoba Canada
email: work: email@hidden
color geek in residence, reality notwithstanding