Drum scanning, any good books or websites:

[Ed Bray]

Just bought a very nice Scanmate 11000 on ebay, The scanner comes with two drums (one a little worn, the other pristine), mounting station, approximately 100 mounting sheets, plenty of drum cleaner and mounting oil, ColorQuartet (v4.0) + dongle, Macintosh Power PC (OS 9), keyboard, mouse, a drum cleaner brush, and it's own flight case.

I was wondering if there were any good books or websites on Drum Scanning, I realise that it will be a steep learning curve but I am prepared to put the necessary work in to give me the best results.

TIA

[dave_whatever]

Nice one Ed, I was keeping my eyes on that, was going to have a punt but it was too far for me to collect at the moment. Looks like you got a good deal, all the peripherals there must be worth a few hundred at least.

[Daniel Stone]

mounting is like developing film:

everyone has their own "method", but there's only "so many" ways to skin a cat

practice makes perfect. DO NOT RUSH ANYTHING. Don't beat yourself up if you don't get a mount correct the first time. Experience and doing it over and over again will eventually have all the blocks fall into place with your routine/workflow.

welcome to the "big-britches" club, as I like to call it

-Dan

[Ed Bray]

Nice one Ed, I was keeping my eyes on that, was going to have a punt but it was too far for me to collect at the moment. Looks like you got a good deal, all the peripherals there must be worth a few hundred at least.

Yes, I did a bit of research before deciding to buy it (there is a similar one in the EU going for just under £4000), the distance helped too as it is only a 200 mile round trip to collect it. I nearly jumped last week when he had a starting price of £950 and it didn't sell, he relisted it for £750 starting and I got it for £797 plus the 4 gallons of fuel to collect it seems like a 'Brucie Bargain' (I nearly have paid that for my V750, Better scanning holders and upgrade of Silverfast).

mounting is like developing film:

everyone has their own "method", but there's only "so many" ways to skin a cat

practice makes perfect. DO NOT RUSH ANYTHING. Don't beat yourself up if you don't get a mount correct the first time. Experience and doing it over and over again will eventually have all the blocks fall into place with your routine/workflow.

welcome to the "big-britches" club, as I like to call it

-Dan

Thanks Daniel, I have done a fair bit of wet mounting on my V750 and whilst I realise it is not the same, I am hoping the experience will stand me in good stead. I really can't wait to see what I can get out of my 5"x7" pyro negatives.

[LF_rookie_to_be]

Oliver seems to have had some problems with high-dpi scans from this scanner when he bought it a year ago (for £250). The scans were garbled, probably a software issue. Hopefully he managed to solve it. I wholly recommend CQ 5.3.1 and OS X 10.4, this is what works fine with my 3000.

[Ed Bray]

Oliver seems to have had some problems with high-dpi scans from this scanner when he bought it a year ago (for £250). The scans were garbled, probably a software issue. Hopefully he managed to solve it. I wholly recommend CQ 5.3.1 and OS X 10.4, this is what works fine with my 3000.

Ouch, that is not what I wanted to hear.

[bob carnie]

I too was looking for good books on scanning when I bought my gear, sadly I have never been able to find a good series of books for this.

[Bruce Watson]

I was wondering if there were any good books or websites on Drum Scanning, I realise that it will be a steep learning curve but I am prepared to put the necessary work in to give me the best results.

I searched high and low and never found a useful book on drum scanning. The market for such books is extremely small which is probably why none or few were published.

As to drum scanning websites, I haven't found any of those either. But there are resources. Such as the Scan Hi-End yahoo group. It's painful to search, but there's much good information there. The files section can be very interesting depending on what you're looking for. And it's still an active group, so posting questions there will often net you good answers.

Drum scanning does have its learning curves, yes. But it's no worse or more difficult than learning how to use a view camera. In the case of the drum scanner, there's two major parts. First, how to make a clean and bubble-free wet mount on a drum. This is pretty much common to all drum scanners. The second part is the scanner's software. This is specific to the drum scanner you own. What I know about ColorGetters doesn't translate to ScanMates.

So again, your best bet is to find someone who already knows how to run your scanner. And that takes us full circle back to the Scan Hi-End yahoo group.

[sanking]

As Bruce mentions the ScanHi-End forum is a great resource.

I have never seen a general book on using drum scanners or other high end professional type scanners. However, most of this equipment originally came with very detailed manuals and instructions. Unfortunately the documentation is often not included in the sale of used high end scanners. But it may be available in .pdf format if the equipment was manufactured after this format became widely used and you can find a lot of such documentation in the Files section of the ScanHi-End forum.


Sandy

[cdavis324]

I have a scanmate 11000 also. The problem is that the scanmate only allows scan lines of 22500 pixels(or there about) in 8 bit(half that in 16bit). When scanning in higher resolution, you either need to stitch, or scan in 8 bit. Either way, the work arounds aren't too bad. The scanner is magical for 35mm - I don't know how it is able to resolve detail so well while keeping grain in check.