Nicola,
Scanners are available with a range of capabilities and a corresponding
range of costs.
You might like to look at the TASI site at http://www.tasi.ac.uk/ which has
a fair amount of material about choosing and using scanners to create high
quality digital images.
For archive use, you need to consider whether this scanner is going to have
continual hard use as in a digitisation project, or occasional use by staff
and visitors, as the biggest difference between the high-end consumer units
and the lower-end professional units is mainly in strength and reliability.
Presuming that you don't have very deep pockets.....I would normally
recommend one of the scanners in the Epson range.
If your use is not going to be very high and you want a good quality
scanner at an affordable price at the top of the consumer range of
scanners. You could do far worse that the Epson Perfection 4870 Photo
which will provide scanning of negs and slides up to about 5x4 or maybe
quarter-plate as well as normal reflective artwork up to A4 size. Not sure
of the exact cost, I think around 350GBP
If you want something stronger, you could look at something like the Epson
1680 Pro with trannie adapter. These are cheaper than they used to be. I
have seen one priced at 675GBP although I am unsure if this includes the
trannie adapter. This is a stong professional unit although quality is not
really any better than the 4870 (possibly worse). You do have the
advantage that you will be able to capture transparencies/negs up to A4.
Both these scanners will provide resolutions of up to and above 800ppi. Do
bear in mind though that of course whereas 800ppi is a high resolution for
capturing flat artwork, this would not be considered high for a 35mm
transparency, where a much larger amount of information must be taken out
of a small original.
Scanners themselves do not recognise text, this is done by an OCR
program. Many scanners do come with cut-down free OCR packages, but if you
want to do a fair bit of OCR, then it will most probably be worth investing
in something more advanced. Personally I have never had a great deal of
sucsess with OCR, but I know that others have. TextBridge is one of the
leading players in this field.
I hope this is of some help.
Please do not hesitate to contact me direct if I can be of any more help in
choosing or establishing a scanner for you.
cheers
eib
Ed I Bremner
BremWeb Imaging
[log in to unmask]
http://www.bremweb.co.uk
h: 01822 832574 m: 07973 335509
At 10/19/2004 04:40 PM, Nicola Allen (Nicola Gray) wrote:
>Dear All
>
>I need to purchase a new scanner, can anyone recommend one?
>
>It must be able to:
>
>1. Scan negatives, slides of varying widths & transparencies of varying
>sizes as well as the usual flatbed scanning
>2. Offer a variety of resolutions, up to 800 dpi
>3. Recognise text
>
>Many thanks
>
>Nicola
>
>Nicola Allen
>Archivist & Records Manager
>RSA
>8 John Adam Street
>London
>WC2N 6EZ
>Tel: +44 (0) 20 7451 6847
>Fax:+44 (0) 20 7839 5805
>E-mail: [log in to unmask]
>
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Ed I Bremner
BremWeb Imaging
[log in to unmask]
http://www.bremweb.co.uk
h: 01822 832574 m: 07973 335509
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