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Re: Digital Scanners



Hi Albert and List,

As the "owner" of a Minolta PS7000, I know it is a very specialized piece
of equipment. It can do a great job on rare books (its main purpose), but
also handles flat paper materials quite well. If you intend to scan books
(producing the equivalent of a high-quality photocopy with no damage to the
book's spine) then the PS7000 is worth it's $20,000 price tag. If you need
it mainly for flat documents, however, you should know:

1) it's incapable of color scanning, only grayscale at a max resolution of
300 ppi.

2) it CAN handle document larger than your typical flatbed scanner

3) the focus mechanism cannot handle rippled, curved paper surface very
well on flat pages. It will focus on one height, and cause some blurring on
the indentations or "valleys" in rippled documents.

4) The illumination light on the PS7000 is VERY hot, and certainly causes
more light damage to a document than does a traditional flatbed scanner. I
joke with my students that we need to keep suntan oil close by when using
the machine:) The tradeoff is that you can scan books that never before
could be scanned without spinal damage.

Perhaps you could explain exactly what documents need to be scanned. If
flat paper document smaller than 11 x 17" (including photographs) are what
you need to scan, then you can find an excellent color-capable flatbed
scanner for much less money.

In our digital imaging lab here at the University of Minnesota, we have not
one but two (liked the first one so much I bought another) Epson Expression
836 XL scanner, that do a remarkable job of producing photo-quality scans.

Hope this helps.

Sincerely,
Chuck Thomas

********************************************************
INTERVIEWER: "Have you made any contributions to culture?"
ELVIS:       "Like income taxes, you mean?"

  --From THE QUOTABLE KING
    (Nashville: Cumberland House, 1997)

"Qui me amat, amet et canem meum" (Love me, love my dog)
 - A proverb mentioned by St. Bernard in his SERMO PRIMUS

Charles F. Thomas, Certified Archivist
Digital Projects Coordinator
Elmer L. Andersen Library, Room 6
222 21st Avenue South
Minneapolis, MN 55455
612-625-0028
thoma134@tc.umn.edu
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