Scanning: Then & Now
Back in the day (25 years ago), film was king. The digital camera did not exist. Cameras put images on film, and if the goal was to print that image in a magazine or newspaper, big, expensive laser drum scanners “separated” the film image into the four separate color “plates” used in printing: cyan, magenta, yellow, and black. The scanner operator would mount the print, negative, or color 35 mm slide onto a clear glass “drum”, put in the enlargement size, along with numerous other variables, hit GO, and let the scanner drum spin, and the scanner computer do it’s job. I was a scanner technician for a several years. The end product was more film, which could now be incorporated into a page, along with text, etc., and a flyer, brochure, magazine, or newspaper was being created. A few years later, the film “separations” were no longer needed as the digital age began, and the scanner was make to “digitize” the scanned image. No more film! This was the beginning of the end of film cameras. And as digital cameras became the norm, the need for the laser drum scanner also disappeared. Almost all photos were already in the digital form. But there are still millions of older photographs, whether in the form of a print, a color slide, or a negative film or slide. The only way to preserve these images now is to scan them into a digital format. And surprisingly, I do a good number of scanning projects. I now use a desktop, flatbed scanner: the Epson Perfection V700 Pro. It can not do what the HELL SC350 scanner could do, but it’s a very good scanner……sharp, crisp images with very good color. And it didn’t cost a quarter million dollars! Please contact me for your scanning needs.
Flatbed Scanner
Laser Drum Scanner
The good old days, I work for HELL for 18 years until they left New York. It was a fascinating job worked on all the products, DC300, 350, 3000 can’t remember all the models. I have very fond memories of the great people I worked with.