Which Drum - High End Flatbed good for the next 30 years?

[Frank Petronio]

If I was going to get a "better than Epson" scanner that I can use for the rest of my working life -- give or take 30 years -- what should I get?

It has to be well built and produce noticeably "better than Epson" results. It also has to be user-maintainable and have a reasonably expectation running under modern and future hardware and software. Or at least a professional level Mac Pro ca. 2020 perhaps?

I don't expect a G3 Mac running OS9 to last until 2041. I also doubt that anyone is going to make some magical new better than Epson scanning device going forward. So whatever is already on the market is pretty much it. Sound about right?

Does this thinking point to the latest Imacon or what?

[Noah A]

Hate to be negative (no pun intended) but I'm afraid that an OS9 Mac and a Howtek may outlast readily available/affordable color film. So I plan to scan my stuff as I shoot it so I don't have to worry about rescanning in 2041. Scan it right the first time and you'll be set as long as you archive your scans and migrate them to new storage media as it becomes available.

But aside from that, I'd say a Hasselblad X1/X5 or Aztek Premier would be your best bet, since they're at least still made and supported. The Aztek will wipe the floor with the Ima/Blads, but at a cost, of course. Of course amortized over 30 years...

[Daniel Stone]

I just looked at some drum scans a fellow member here on the forum kindly helped me to make yesterday(on his Aztek) during a day-long visit to his house. These were from 8x10 color negs(one of the scans) and a few 6x6 Hasselblad transparencies(RDPIII). At ~28" square at 300dpi(6x6 scans), these scans are CRAZY sharp, and I can see more deep shadow detail than with my 6x Schneider loupe, or with my friends 25X Leitz microscope. And this was only a 4000dpi scan . I could re-run it at 8000dpi and go 2x bigger(so ~56" square), if I wanted too... Thats BIG IMO...

I'm planning on drum scanning my film in the future, well, at least my color film. B/W I'll still stay in the darkroom for that

-Dan

[Frank Petronio]

Well I am planning to be that 80-year old still shooting and scanning... Lenny better be taking his vitamins ;-)

[mdm]

How long till you flick it on? My money is on less tha 6 months.

[vinny]

drum scanning ain't for everybody. kinda like large format. Do a few fluid mount scans and you'll wonder where the day went.

[polyglot]

What electronics hardware do you know of from 30 years ago (1980!) that's still working, other than maybe the meter in a camera, some whitegoods and car ignitions? Certainly absolutely nothing on the order of complexity of a film scanner unless it's been actively maintained at huge expense by an industrial or governmental institution.

Consider the advances that digital imaging technology has made since 2000, when we had 2MP sensors, or since 1990 when people were digitising TV signals. And since 1980? Complete and utter revolution. Count on there being a similarly dramatic shift in technology (and incompatibility).

I don't think what you're asking for exists because technology does not retain stability or compatibility on those time-scales. While we can plug in a hard drive from 10 years ago (you will need an adapter to get it into a SATA machine!), it gets very hard even at only 20 years (prior to IDE). 30 years? Forget it - people are now building custom hardware to electromagnetically scan hard drive platters to retrieve Cray (the biggest player in supercomputers of the time!) operating systems that were discarded. That should tell you what you need to know about proprietary equipment and anything that requires a non-commodity interface or manufacturer's driver.

You need the following features:
- complete open source software imaging chain with full toolchain (compilers, operating system, etc) support to permit rebuild (e.g. VueScan, gimp, jpeg, no manufacturer drivers required, linux, gcc, etc)
- common bus connection that is well supported by consumer hardware, i.e. USB or firewire; SCSI is OK if you have linux support and keep a couple cards on-hand
- physical ruggedness / repairability

You're going to need a dedicated machine and a supply of parts (not just the scanner but the host PC) to keep it going for even 10 years. Forget 30. Getting a 10 year old machine up is the work of a few days, a 20 year old machine is the work of weeks or months. A 30 year old machine: usually faster to design and build an emulator from scratch.

Edit: my crystal ball says that in 30 years, you will be able to order up (parts for) a custom manufactured drum scanner using 3D-printing technology and commodity optoelectronic components, in the same way that today you can buy laser-cut acrylic signs for your shop window or CNC-milled wooden toys. And the performance will exceed that of any scanner that you can purchase right now.

Edit2: Right now, for well under $1000, you can build a CNC machine (mill, laser cutter, extrusion, hotwire, whatever) and achieve better than 100-micron absolute positioning accuracy. It's a very small step from that kind of technology to building a 4000dpi scanner yourself if you have basic engineering skills. Or retrofit assorted old drum/flatbed scanning hardware to talk to a modern computer-of-the-day.

[Matus Kalisky]

Frank, I am sure you have experience with the Imacon scans. For me these are more than good enough, though the question is whether 2040 spi is enough for your 4x5" and whether 4x5" is large enough for you

But would not one of the latest (last?) Creo (iQsmart2 or 3) be the right decision?

Still - I can hardly imagine ANY of the scanners available today to run for 30 years without the need for regular maintenance and repairs.

Who knows - maybe in 10 years one will just get a large Foveon sensor camera and use it for "scannig". Once one camera will stop working, you get another one. If there would be a decent automatized stand that could even do HDR, it could be a solution ... ?

If I had the means today, I would probably get the Imcaon X5 as it would be enough for me. I also like the rather compact size.

[Bruce Watson]

If I was going to get a "better than Epson" scanner that I can use for the rest of my working life -- give or take 30 years -- what should I get?

A reasonable question with an unreasonable answer: There aren't any scanners that will last 30 years. What electronics does? I've got a computer that's limping (dying graphics card) after 11 years. That's the kind of problem you'll face with a scanner, only worse (a scanner has moving parts to wear out). Where will you get the spare parts? As computer OSes evolve, who will write device drivers for your non-supported scanner? As computer interfaces evolve, how will you connect to the scanner (this has been a problem with drum scanners for a decade now as SCSI and GPIB become obsolete)?

About the best you can hope for is to buy multiple scanners of the same model so you can use one as a parts box for the other -- so you can keep one of them running for longer than normal.

[Gem Singer]

Frank,

In 30 years, photo scanning and inkjet printing will be a thing of the past.

Silver coated photo sensitive material (film and paper) will also fade into history.

Go ahead and purchase an Epson 700 series scanner now, and enjoy it while you can.

That's what I did.