Drumscanner

[Eirik Berger]

Hello all

My challenge: I need to find a way to scan my 4x5 and 8x10 transarencies. Most often I will need to scan 8x10 black/white negatives for digital printing in large sizes (40x50 - 80x100 cm)

I have read through this forum to see if I could learn something from the users of this forum. I did, I realize that I am not alone trying to find descent ways to digitalize my precious negatives.

A company wants to sell me an Optronics Colorgetter 3 pro (drumscanner) with Colorright Pro software. They want 1600 USD (converted from norwegian currency) for the scanner which includes several drums, mounting table and an old Mac 9600 with software installed.

My experience with drumscanners is very limited, can someone tell me if this scanner is right for me or not? What are tho Pros and cons with this scanner?

[Ted Harris]

Elrik,

The answer is quick and simple. There is only one downside ..... you will need to spend considerable time to learn to use the software properly. It is a great scanner at a bargain price assumoing all i sin good working order. Michael Mutmansky and I used the same scanner as our 'reference' scanner for the recent View Camera article on scanners and the subsequent presentations at the View Camera Conference. If you go to the scanning article athe the LF Home Page you will see the excellent results of this scanner. You will not do better.

I am envious!!!!!!

[Eirik Berger]

Thanks Ted.
The scanning article was exactly what I needed. I will most likely purchase this scanner.
My biggest consern is software compability with newer computers/OS. I guess the included software is for Mac OS 8 and 9, since an old Mac 9600 comes with the scanner. Does it exist software for Mac OSX and newer versions of Windows?

Eirik

[Bruce Watson]

I own a ColorGetter 3 Pro and mostly use it to scan 4x5 Tri-X. It works wonderfully for this. Other than the fact that that's a hell of a deal, some things to know:

1) http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ScanHi-End/

2) ColorGetters come in two parts - a scan unit (big box, about 100 Kg) and a separate control unit (a little PC that boots off of a 3.5 floppy disk). A lot of liquidators (who don't know anything about the equipment they are trying to sell) throw the PC away thinking it's worthless. They are very wrong. If you don't have the control unit, all you got is a box 'o parts.

3) See if you can get the AutoCal diskette and it's matching ND filter. They are a matched pair. Otherwise, you can get a replacement from Tech Services (http://www.tsiyes.com/) (whose website appears to be down right this minutes), but it's quite pricey.

4) Get all the cables - GPIB cables are often difficult to find.

5) See if you can get the manuals - the setup manual tells you how to run the cables, for example.

6) The old Mac will be just fine if you dedicate it to the scanner. I'm running a 7100 at a whopping 66MHz IIRC, and it does fine. Just be sure you have the GPIB card in the Mac.

7) If you are scanning negatives, you'll want to upgrade to ColorRight 2.0 Pro (http://www.colorbytesoftware.com/colorright.htm). The software is still being maintained - you can still get bug fixes, if you can find a bug. This is a big improvement over ColorRight 5.x. While it's called an upgrade, it's really completely new. I think it's a port of Trident for Optronics.

8) Wet mounting supplies can be had from Prazio (http://prazio.com/) in NA, or SDS in Europe. You can try Kami fluid also, but be warned that it has a history of hazing certain drums that supposedly are not annealed properly. Search the archives of the yahoo group above for more.

9) Wet mounting takes some care and some practice (not much really, but not zero either). You'll find it's easier with a light table under the mounting station so you can see through the drum while you work. Also, if you look in the files section of the yahoo group, you can find a "mounting 101" file by Chris Brown IIRC that is very useful indeed.

10) Like most all drum scanners, the ColorGetter is slow, loud, heavy, and generates a lot of waste heat (900W). The tradeoff is absolutely gorgeous scans. There are certainly learning curves, but it's not nearly as bad as people would lead you to believe. Your first scans will be usable. After a few weeks they'll be pretty darn good. After a few months they'll be better than you can outsourse, because you'll be scanning your own work, and not a wide range of other people's film.

Good luck and enjoy.

[Michael Mutmansky]

Eirik,

No, the sorftware is only supposed to be available for OS 9.0 and no higher. I'm suprised it is operating on a 9600, as that sounds like they have a SCSI version of the scanner, which were rare. The highest computer that the normal scanner interface (GPIB) would run on is an 8100, as that is the last computer to have GPIB slots.

Most people who use these scanners have an old machine set up to run the scanner, and then have that networked to their modern machines. Mine uses OS 8.6, but I understand it could be loaded with up to OS 9.0. I don't save the files on the scanning machine. The network is fast enough to send the data continuously to the other machine in my network without any problems. I'm actually using a wireless network for that without difficulty.

The ColorRight Pro software is made by ColorByte Software:

http://www.colorbytesoftware.com/colorright.htm

A call to them may be warranted to verify compatibility with the software and hardware that the seller has, and to determine if it can be upgraded to a difference OS.

[Bruce Watson]

Michael,

ColorRight 2.0 Pro does support MacOS 9.1 - that's what I'm using.

I've read that a "popular" alternative Mac is the blue and white G3. It doesn't have NuBus slots, but you can get GPIB cards from National and at least one other supplier for PCI machines. Those cards are expensive though, and you don't seem to gain a lot other than having a faster interface for ColorRight.

[Michael Mutmansky]

Bruce,

That's good to hear, as I don't think that ColorByte was able to tell me that this was an option when I upgraded. I had asked them if I could go this route, but I had heard that there was a limitation tn that OS 9.0 was the highest OS that supported the GPIB interface. It must actually be OS9.1 instead.

The PCI GPIB cards are very expensive, so there must be a use for them that keeps the cost high, even on the used market. Anyone know what they are used for other then scanners?

---Michael

[Michael Chmilar]

Does anyone know the differences between the Colorgetter scanner models? I have seen ads for Colorgetter 2, 3, and Falcon.

[Michael Mutmansky]

Michael,

The CG2 is older than the CG3, and the 'bird of prey' line is newer than the CG3.

The Bird of Prey line came out around 1994 and lasted until the endo of Optronics.

Some people claim that the CG3 Pro is the 'best' scanner because of some cost-cutting measures that were introduced in the later line, most specifically, the lamp was changed from a HID lamp to a halogen lamp. I don't know if that was done through all the models of the Bird of Prey line, but I understand it was done on the Eagle, which is the most comparable to the CG3 Pro (about 11x15 maximum film size).

Here is a source for specifications on someof the models:

http://www.promarketinc.com/pdf/

---Michael

[Struan Gray]

GPIB was developed by Hewlett Packard as the HPIB bus. In the days when the 68xxx series processors (in the Mac world, the Mac II and its pre-PowerPC successors) were the standard for HPs Unix workstations they used it on a variety of peripherals such as printers, plotters and humungeous 'Winchester' external hard disks. It was codified as the IEEE-488 standard, and IBM/Microsoft came up with the GPIB name for the PC version.

For a long time is was a standard interface on laboratory instruments. It was more flexible than serial links, and up to six external devices could be daisy-chained off one computer interface. I have used it with multimeters, pressure sensors, storage oscilloscopes, lock-in amplifiers, printers and a home-built probe microscope controller.

These days USB or Firewire have mostly taken over, but GPIB is still offered as a standard on many pieces of laboratory gear.

I used a lot of National Instruments (www.ni.com) kit on Macs, PCs and Unix workstations. On the Mac the GPIB cards and drivers seemed to survive operating system upgrades nicely. I was using a program written in 1988 as late as 1999 unmodified except for driver updates. I would therefore expect the scanner to work with all the standalone versions of OS 9, but Classic may be too much of a stretch. The only device N.I. support GPIB on in OS X is a (very slow) ethernet to GPIB bridge.

[Michael Mutmansky]

Straun,

Thanks for the history lesson. That's about the story I've heard about the GPIB cards.

It's my understanding that Apple removed support for GPIB in 9.2.2 but that it was fully supported in 9.0, and it sounds like also in 9.1.

Can you recommend a specific model of NI PCI-GPIB card that should work directly in a G3 MAC? That is my biggest concern, that I get the most suitable card for the task. It would be great to leave behind the old machine that I am using, (an old 8100), so all I need to do is get a G3 and a GPIB card and I can get that upgraded.

---Michael

[Struan Gray]

I last bought GPIB hardware in 2000, and that was a PCI-GPIB card called 'PCI-GPIB' for use under Windows NT. That card would work on either PCs or Macs with PCI buses, and we swapped it between an NT machine and a (I think) 9600 several times. It should certainly work with a G3.

What is the card in your 8100? I can't remember all the Mac models and which had NuBus and which PCI, but if the 8100 is PCI you may find your card can be simply swapped to a newer machine.

I took another look at the NI website, and it seems I was mislead by the 'support' part which is only for legacy products. They are selling new PCI-GPIB cards for both Mac OS Classic and OS X. The one for Classic looks exactly like the one I bought in 2000, and I suspect it is the same. The N.I. application engineers were always very helpful whenever I called them, so if you want to find out if this card will work with OS 9.1 on a G3, I would ask them.

GPIB is a very simple protocol, so another option would be one of the GPIB-tunnelling products that use Firewire, USB or Ethernet to connect to the computer, but which look like any other GPIB bus to the application software. The Ethernet version used to be too slow for imaging (I looked into using it to run a microscope) but the Firewire one might have enough throughput to support your scanner. Watch out if the application does a lot of low-level control of the scanner though, old GPIBs and GPIB-tunnels can be fine when streaming data, but clog up fast if you're doing a lot of bi-directional communication.

Finally, GPIB is getting tossed out all over the place in academic and commercial labs. If you want to save money, a spot of dumpster diving or a browse of your local uni. thrift shop could reap rewards. Look for the telltale connector sticking out of the back of junked or pennies-on-the-dollar computers. N.I. have always been very helpful to me when I have been trying to resurrrect or continue using old products.

[Struan Gray]

PS: two further thoughts.

1. If the scanner software is well-written, it may run under Classic just fine. In which case a new Classic-compatible card would let you use any of the modern Macs.

2. If you have the space, don't underestimate the usefulness of having an old computer reliably churning away at a single job. The chances of you getting a virus on that 8100 will be virtually nil, and you can get on with other work or play on your other computers without worrying about the consequences of a crash.

[Michael Mutmansky]

Straun,

The 8100 is a Nubus machine (The last of the Nubus models).

I'll look into this a bit and see what I can figure out. I live near a university, and they do have a salvage depot, so maybe I'll check up there for a card or two.

I'll be happy with OS9.1 I suspect, as this machine is the anomoly in my office, the rest are modern PC's, so regardless of what I get for the scanner, it is a purpose use machine exclusively.

I found one reference on the NI website that indicates that the drivers for the PCI-GPIB cards are for OS9.0 ONLY, not 9.1 or higher, which is where my confusion came from, and why I stated they would only work up to 9.0. However, Bruce is working on 9.1, so there must be some compatability up into 9.1, but it may not have full compatibility. It must have enough to work for him, though.

I'm pleased I can get a newer machine running for the scanner, as it is a fantastic machine, and I'd like to be able to use it for many years to come. I recently had to swap the motherboard on the 8100 I had, and now I am out of spares, so I have to either buy a few old 8100's on Ebay, or move up to a newer machine. The G3 seems to be the logical choice for me.

Thanks for your input on this, as the Mac realm is beyond my experience bounds.

---Michael

[AlexUnderBoots]

Good day. can have someone there ColorRight for WinNT

[Karl Hudson]

I have a client in Oregon who upgraded to a Tango. He purchased it from Hudson Grafik and I was there to do the installation. While there I saw that he has two ColorGetter Eagle Premier scanners in optimum condition (with the Mac Workstations included) for sale...total package price is around $6000.00 with shipping. Contact me for more info. The purchase would be direct from the owner, since my company only deals in Heidelberg brand hardware made in Germany...Karl Hudson

[BetterSense]

sparkfun.com sells a GPIB to USB adapter. We bought one when we needed to connect a GPIB SourceMeter to a modern computer.