Design of a scanning room / suite. Any advice ?

I'd be more worried about excellent and repeatable viewing conditions than spending too much time and thought on how clean the room is. You are going to have to clean the room from time to time no matter what. Funky viewing conditions will cause more problems than a few dust specs. Think hard about the lighting and the position of the monitors.

For dust problems, think about keeping a little humidity in the room. The drier the air, the more stuff will move around and the more static charges will be a problem.

Just wondering, what is the need for (4) eversmarts, and potentially a drum scanner as well? Are you an archiving service, or do you work for a museum?

Dan

Maybe it's an underground bunker in Idaho dedicated to preserving the images of Western Civilization after the apocalypse?

But if it is meant for a regular (well, upscale) home studio environment, I'd at least consider resale possibilities and not go overboard with the mods. Do you really need a cleanroom or would just a common sense low key approach save you $50K and result in only a moderate number of additional dust spots and maintenance?

Frankly I'd probably put a little of the savings into a good sound system and a faster editing station so the work itself is less tedious.

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Originally Posted by DanielStone

Just wondering, what is the need for (4) eversmarts, and potentially a drum scanner as well? Are you an archiving service, or do you work for a museum?

Dan

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I will be offering an archival service in the UK. I'm looking to design the scanning suite carefully to minimise the day-to-day maintenance time and allow me to keep costs low.

FWIW, I don't do any of those things. I clean the table under the mounting station regularly, with the same cleaning fluid I use to clean the drum (it's anti-static). I hit things with compressed air on occasion. When one does a drum scan, you clean the drum just before the scan, then you pull the film out of its protective sleeve. Dust is not that much of a problem, IMO, to go to all these lengths that people describe. The majority of things I have to spot are from folks loading their holders in dusty conditions. Yes, there is an odd bit of lint, once in a while, but its rare. The spots are almost entirely from the dust on the film when shooting. (Some people have to reload while in the desert and they are forgiven.)

I also question the idea of having all those flatbeds. I suppose if you are scanning a large amount of glass negs, then it makes sense. Otherwise, not. If there is budget for all of what you describe, it makes no sense to me to use CCD technology when PMT is available - at least for things that can bend around a drum.

It's always nice when things are clean. But one can go overboard. Many of the great prints were done in very dirty darkrooms.

Best of luck,

Lenny

Thanks Lenny, your input is much appreciated.

I'm hoping that with a bit of careful thought in the design stage it won't cost a fortune to build a clean, well lit room. It's a lot easier to get it right first than try to fix it later when kit is installed.

I probably won't be using commercial "clean room" equipment, as that has £££ written all over it, but some flexible tubing with perhaps car pollen filters or vacuum cleaner HEPA allergy filters would be cheap enough and easy to route.

I already have three of the scanners, they can take 40 x 35mm slides in one mask and should be very productive. I won't be targeting the top-end like yourself so I need something fast and versatile. They also happened to be available very cheaply and hardly used, which I confess was a big part.

Cheers,

Steve