Kodak 4050 scanner

[Allen in Montreal]

I have been offered a Kodak 4050 scanner and all the holders, I really do not know much about this unit.
Does anyone have hands on experience?
Is it worth recovering?
I have a Mac G3 scsi, I would just need to find photoshop 8 to use the aquire module (I run PS 7 on my old G3 currently).

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

[Shootar401]

Wow! Memories. My friend had one back in 2002-2003. All I remember about it, is that it was a beast, about the size of a small refrigerator, and about as heavy as one. If I remember correctly He used it with a G4 to make PCD files for customers with Kodak PCD software of some kind. The image quality was pretty good back then, probably still is. I shot him a quick email to see if he remembers anything about it. I know you could scan just about any format from 110 to 4x5, maybe larger.

[Frank Petronio]

I remember them from the Photo CD days too, it was like a hopped up Leaf 45 Scanner and it probably cost $50K new. The original Leaf 45 was a tower scanner with a CCD, you could get 16-bit scans, I used to make 100 mb scans with my Quadra 950s, early G3s (when the G3 was the super chip).

The Photo CD scans I had from larger film were quite good, Kodak basically invented the digital workflow everyone uses now.

[Allen in Montreal]

Thank you guys, it is a rather large unit, a fraction of the size of my old Topaz, but still rather large.

I have not found any software yet, only an acquire module for PS 8, which I don't have yet.
I assume it can output a TIFF file?

The owner told me it only scans up to 4x5, so looking a little less attractive as 5x7 is what I shoot most, so I am still on the fence about recovering the unit.

[Mark Sampson]

I can't keep track of which scanner yours might be. But from c.1995-2008 when I worked for Kodak, our main scanner was a Kodak 'Photo Image Workstation' that was probably the predecessor of yours. It used a Sun SparcStation 2 computer; there were enough different boxes attached to it to fill a small room. it actually pre-dated Photoshop, so many of the image-editing/correction/dust-busting capabilities were built-in. The one we had was a prototype that had been adapted to scan 5" aerial film, although we never did that. Even stranger by modern standards, the computer wouldn't save a file, but wrote a .pcd file to a Photo CD on the spot. It gave really high quality scans. Even if the workflow was a pain, as in 'write CD, go to PC with the disc, open Photoshop, save as tiff". It had been so expensive when new we had to keep it forever...eventually it succumbed to mechanical problems and lack of use, due to our adoption of digital cameras. Frank's last sentence, above, is quite correct.

[rhodkin]

I actually have one of these that I'm trying to sell! Anyone else interested in one? I also have a Kodak 1000 for sale too!