AGFA Scanners - dust on glass inside
Steve Smith
- both on the
stationary platen & on the glass in the lid used to provide transmitted
light for scanning
transparencies & negatives. I doubt the dust causes noticeable
deterioration in image
quality - my gut feeling is that the dust inside the glass is too far from
the surface being
scanned to be in focus & too small to block light.
That being said, I have seen splotches on images scanned from 35mm slides.
I'm
not certain whether this is being caused by dust on the slides, dust on the
outer surface
of the glass or dust on the inner surface - if anyone has any opinions on
the matter I'd
love to hear them.
The frustrating thing with the Arcus is that there appears to be no easy
way to clean the
inside surfaces of the glass. As our machine is used for instructional
purposes, I'm not
real bent out of shape about it, but a call to Agfa service is definitely
order. If you receive
any useful responses off-list, Guenter, please forward to me if you think
they wouldn't
be of general interest to IMAGELIB folks.
Steve
--
Steve Smith
AMIGOS Imaging Service Coordinator
AMIGOS Bibliographic Council, Inc.
12200 Park Central Dr., Suite 500
Dallas, TX 75251-2104
800/843-8482 or 214/851-8000
214/991-6061 (fax)
http://www.amigos.org
sm...@amigos.org
Please respond to IMAGELIB <IMAG...@LISTSERV.ARIZONA.EDU>
To: IMAG...@LISTSERV.ARIZONA.EDU
cc: (bcc: Steve Smith/Amigos)
Subject: AGFA Scanners - dust on glass inside
Hi Imagelib Listserv,
at the Berkeley Art Museum, we own three Agfa Scanners: a 2 year old Arcus
II, a fairly recent StudioStar and a brand-new Duoscan. When we got the
Duoscan, I discovered a thin layer of dust on the inside of the glas which
serves as the scan surface. You can not really see the dust by looking
straight into the scanner, but once the light-source turns on and you look
at the surface from a low angle, it becomes quite apparent.
First I thought this might be a singular defect of our new scanner, but it
turns out that all the AGFA scanners we have at BAM plus two other Duoscans
which I looked at have the same veil of dust coating on the glass.
I ran a couple of tests scanning just the black surface on the inside of
the cover to see whether the dust shows up on the images; however, at a
high resolution it seems almost impossible to tell dust from the
micro-structure of the black cover.
Has anybody experienced similiar problems with Agfa or non-Agfa scanners?
My more specific questions:
(1) Do your scanners have the veil of dust, too?
(2) Do you know of any test method which would enable me to ascertain
whether that dust shows up on the scans or not?
(3) Especially the Duoscan seems to be prone to dustproblems. Particles can
enter via the slide tray, and via the hinges of the lid. How do you clean
out the inside of the glass without voiding the warranty, i.e. taking the
lid off?
For the project I am involved in, we scan original artwork on paper at a
resolution of 6ooppi for archival purposes.
Thanks for your feedback!
Guenter Waibel
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Guenter Waibel
Berkeley Art Museum & Pacific Film Archive
2625 Durant Avenue
Berkeley, California 94720-2250
CIAO Project Specialist http://www.bampfa.berkeley.edu/ciao/
gue...@uclink4.berkeley.edu
Phone 510-643-8655
Fax 510-642-4889
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~