Hello ‘The few remaining not quite bored yet scanner
inquisitors’,
The internet is indeed a huge mine of unfortunately
it is also a huge mine of dismis
outdated and of course the scary one, opine
If we are not careful when we discuss cameras some of us will
pick up their Hasselblad with all the options and accessories,
others will pick up their $6 Fuji cardboard returnable and both
may believe the author is addressing them. Which of these three
is the idiot?
The discrepancies between modern scanners are not so obvious but
they certainly do exist. To divorce the scanner from the software
and computer hardware is akin to ignoring extension tubes, camera
settings, film colour temperature and speed, process pushing, and
all the wonderful darkroom stunts such as dodging, flashing, hot
spotting etc., did we also ignore airbrushing?
Of course there are moderating circumstances, we all have
different requirements in our imaging needs and are sometimes
limited by time or finances. My goals are probably no different
to those of most of you, I simply want to be able to show my
efforts as faithfully as possible, whether that is on paper or a
monitor. However I am not a jeweller, I am a stone cutter, if I
cut a 1 mm brilliant I would like to show that all the facets are
there and that they are all polished.
In a previous post I mentioned that my photographic efforts have
proved disappointing. I have been unable to get any worthwhile
photographs of anything other than the larger stones. I have not
read any posts on the subject of photography that has described a
procedure that I hadn’t already tried, and failed with.
With the correct equipment however, imaging this 1mm stone is
trivial. Just playing I scanned an 8mm amber with a tiny spider
and produced an 8 x 10 glossy picture which shows that the spider
has hairy legs, also the strain in the amber caused by its death
struggle are clearly visible. I apologise to all our
arachnophobics for that subject matter. The amber was scanned at
9600 dpi, although interpolated the 4800 dpi image didn’t give
the clarity of resolution on my monitor. At one dot per pixel you
get a huge picture to scroll over, zoomed to screen size you will
often get weird effects such as moire and what looks like half
toning, don’t worry about this, the file/picture has integrity
and will print well.
A recent post suggesting monitor resolution as being a factor in
the scanning process is dangerously misleading, for instance my
1mm stone is now smaller than 4 pixels if scanned at my monitor
resolution, how many facets can you see?
Although I charge for my imaging services I am not encouraging
custom with my posts. I would rather you did it. I only image
jewellery and related items, I only do this for jewellers and
crafts persons. I charge $2 to scan to my web site for my web
customers $5 to yours. $25 for an 8x10 glossy. $20 for a CD.
These prices include the ‘shooting session’ in which the jeweller
participates and approves the image, however many times it
takes. That way no pictures or CDs are thrown away. Those are
little tiny Canadian dollars by the way. I don’t think these are
expensive fees. They include a profit. Many of you are used to
spending more than this for disappointment. What I am doing is
quite simple to do and requires very little learning to achieve
the skills necessary for top quality imaging, unlike those
necessary to achieve even barely acceptable results with a
camera and we haven’t mentioned the huge time savings and instant
results. If I can stop just one person from patronising an idiot
wedding photographer with a Nikon and an attitude, then my time
hasn’t been wasted. If I can convince all of you and every other
jeweller to supplement their camera equipment usefully then I
won’t have to do it anymore. Maybe I’ll get some cutting done.
I didn’t just go out and buy a scanner to plug into my PC and
come up with these suggestions, I actually did a little research
as well as learning by using. To start with I didn’t own a PC and
couldn’t figure out why anyone else did. It certainly wasn’t my
idea of a useful computer, still isn’t. I quickly learned that if
I wanted to use a computer to image with. the PC won hands down
on cost and availability of software and accessories.
A badly bitten tongue later I learned that a 166mhz MMX Pentium
is the slowest CPU to consider, a faster one will not necessarily
speed up this process as your scanner and printer speeds are the
governing factors for imaging time. You must have an absolute
minimum of 128 megs of RAM, there is no room for debate here. A
fast Hard drive is essential if you only have 128 megs of RAM,
speed is way more important than size, (sorry ladies) a couple of
Gigs is more than enough.
A SCSI will be nice and fast and the 2 giggers are cheap enough
these days. Partition it. Have a gig partition just for your
graphics caching. Point all of your graphics programmes at it. Do
not put any files in it other than temporary files. Monitor and
other hardware…whatever. I advocate a CDR and an LS120 as
highly desirables not essentials.
The scanner; Oh Oh, Yup, I did my best to test the sanity and
patience of all the people I knew in the computer business,
borrowing many scanners, testing them in stores and interrogating
manufacturers at trade shows and the most useful source,
programmers of the acquiring software. Especially those
programmers involved in translation and cross platform
applications. Obviously there is little point in translating for
equipment that is low or limited quality as the destination
market is limited enough in the first place. These programmers
assess capabilities of equipment way more aggressively than the
manufacturers hired writers.
During my testing I used plastic film, Saran wrap and sheet
acetate to protect the surfaces of the various scanners I was
borrowing, a close examination of these various films showed the
only damage they had suffered was a result of my cleaning
efforts, I quickly discovered it takes a fairly heavy and ham
fisted effort to scratch glass with a piece of jewellery. Indeed
even diamonds require an aggressive action to make a noticeable
mark. NO, don’t try it on your scanner, a piece of broken window
pane will tell you everything you need to know. I have scanned
almost 2 thousand jewellery items many of them set with diamonds
and have yet to scratch the scanning surface. Just be careful.
Any film, sheet or glass covering will cause undesirable
degradation of your images, worse than that many plastic sheets
have random polarising to play havoc with your stone images. The
scanner I chose is the Umax 1200S which outperformed everything
I could get my hands on or find out about for fast 3D resolution,
many higher priced and faster scanners gave poor 3D results. This
choice may not be the best today, but I have stopped looking.
Saving images; Not on my hard drive. A CD will hold 650
megabytes which is big enough for a couple of pictures or one
large one and is less than $3. Most of my big images just go to
paper. I use an Epson 800 1440 dpi inkjet which is the fastest
printer I have found that gives me the quality I need to satisfy
my customers. No laser printer within or without my means can
compare with the Epson with microweave on plastic. It is a truly
remarkable image that holds up well even with a 10x loupe. This
film is about $10 per sheet. High gloss paper is only $1-4 per
sheet and is completely acceptable to most of my customers. To
quote Epson " At 300 dpi you can see a gemstone. At 720 dpi you
can see a diamond. At 1440 you can tell it’s a Cubic Zirconia".
Just in case I still have readers, I have to comment on the
referred scanner web site
http://www.hsdesign.com/scanning/3D/3d.html There is useful
stuff here but the suggestions are somewhat general and a little
away from what we are doing. The additional lighting suggestions
are good but the method is crude and a bit dangerous I think. I
like pocket mag lites for this as they offer much more control
with less injury. Not much on boxes, backdrops, reflectors,
holding devices, distance scanning or scanning attitudes (the
piece not this forum). There are also software tips for curing
scanning problems that are caused by underscanning, Duh, jagging
and rainbows become obvious only in scans made below optical so
these aren’t helpful to us.
I know I’ve said this before but it is important, always acquire
the biggest image you can afford to wait for. NEVER resize for a
smaller image always resample down to your requirements,
especially thumbnails.
I have also said this before too, digital imaging with this
method is not a substitute for a camera, nothing you do will win
a photographic competition, the best you can hope for is text
book quality pictures nobody will buy your efforts for calendar
art. The incredible photographic prowess of Harold and Erica Van
Pelt will continue to prove that my humble suggestions make for
an inadequate comparison between two imaging methods. If your
photography compares to their work then all this is as much
nonsense, mine wasn’t, so I hope my experiences are useful to
someone who wants good cheap fast pictures.
\ () || |/
\ /
/
web site: http://www.opalsinthebag.com
e-mail: cutter@nospam@opalsinthebag.com
Vancouver, B.C. CANADA.