MacWorld Expo report: Microtek, Olympus, Orb
Patrick Tower
I haven't heard seen reports from MacWorld Expo, so I'll put in my two
cents.
One of my main goals at this show was to see the new Microtek
Scanmaker V, and it just might be the ideal multi-purpose scanner.
Microtek had one of the smaller booths for as respected a company as
they are. I guess they prefer to quietly put out a quality product.
This as opposed to Linocolor, which had dancers performing every hour--it
took me a while to figure out just what the products was. :)
Once I found the booth , I was surprised at what this scanner claims
to offer. It can scan both refelected material (up to 8.5x14) and
transparent material (up to 8x10) at 1000x2000 DPI optical and 36 bit
color. Transparent media can be scanned directly from the emulsion
due to the fact that, instead of using the same flatbed as for
reflected media, it scans from a drawer below the scan head, which
then points down instead of up. There are four or five different
trays to slide into this drawer.
In addition to holders for 4x5 and medium format negs, there is one
which holds two strips of 6 35mm negs and one which is just a plate of
glass to hold free-floating originals. The one thing they don't have
(at least not yet) which would make it ideal for me is a tray that
will hold seven strips of five 35mm negs in contact sheet fashion. I
guess they wanted to save some money on the 35mm tray by making fewer
holes in it. I asked the rep if such a device might be possible, and
he said that he would mention the suggestion to the technical people.
The thing that surprised me the most about his scanner was that it
claims a density range of 3.6. This beats even the Sprintscan+ film
scanner which I had considered top of the line (until you hit Leaf
scanners or drum scanners). I wasn't able to see what the interface
is like, although I would love to see how well it previews from
negatives.
Unfortunately, my timing was bad and during the time I was there, the
photographer who had been flown in from Boston as a spokesman for the
unit was gone to lunch and to let his voice recover. They did have
some nice examples of his work which had been scanned with the
Scanmaker V and then output directly to photographic media.
Price was another surprise. At first I thought it sounded expensive
at $2500 (MSRP, I think), but now I realize that if that's correct, it
really quite a bargain if you want to scan a variety of originals,
large and small, transparent and reflective. Resolution isn't
adequate for very large prints from 35mm, but it should be fine for
web work, and I think it will be very popular which people who need to
scan medium to large format film.
At the other end of the scale, I was quite impressed with the scan
quality of the Olypus ES-10 film/neg scanner for about $500. It's
only a 24 bit scanner, and the shadows seemed to drop off noticably in
the one neg that I scanned, but that was just one test and on an
unfamiliar monitor. The scan looked sharp, and at 2400x1600 pixels, it
should be sufficient for most web applications even if the image is
cropped.
One surprise (to me) at the show was the Orb removable media drive.
Has anyone heard of this? It holds somewhere around 1 gig, has a 12ms
seek rate, 5400rpm speed and costs $199 for drive and under $40 for
media (at the show, anyway). I'm curious how it might compare with
the Jaz and Syjet units, which are somewhat more expensive. The down
side for me is that, like the other units, it isn't available as a
(non-OEM) internal Mac SCSI device.
Well, I guess I've babbled for long enough. Hopefully I've provided
something useful to someone out there. :)
--
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Patrick Tower home page/gallery:
po...@leland.stanford.edu HTTP://www-leland.stanford.edu/~poser/
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Phyllis Evans
In article <69jqfr$l...@epic13.Stanford.EDU>, po...@leland.Stanford.EDU
(Patrick Tower) wrote:
<snip>
>One surprise (to me) at the show was the Orb removable media drive.
>Has anyone heard of this? It holds somewhere around 1 gig, has a 12ms
>seek rate, 5400rpm speed and costs $199 for drive and under $40 for
>media (at the show, anyway). I'm curious how it might compare with
>the Jaz and Syjet units, which are somewhat more expensive. The down
>side for me is that, like the other units, it isn't available as a
>(non-OEM) internal Mac SCSI device.
Actually, from what I've seen, an Orb cartridge will hold 2.1 gigs, and
the cost per cartridge is estimated to be around $25 (street price). The
company producing it was started by the original designer of the Syquest.
It was originally announced at Boston last summer, and it's supposed to
start shipping sometime this 1st quarter. I've already told my family that
I expect one for my birthday in May. The claim is that it will have a
lower failure rate than the Jazz and Syjet drives, but that remains to be
seen. IF they can actually produce it at the promised prices, and it's as
stable as they say, it should be terrific.
--
Phyllis Evans pme...@mail.com
http://members.aol.com/pmevans
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"Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend.
Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read."
Groucho Marx
John Briggs
po...@leland.Stanford.EDU (Patrick Tower) wrote:
>I haven't heard seen reports from MacWorld Expo, so I'll put in my two
>cents.
...
>One surprise (to me) at the show was the Orb removable media drive.
>Has anyone heard of this? It holds somewhere around 1 gig, has a 12ms
>seek rate, 5400rpm speed and costs $199 for drive and under $40 for
>media (at the show, anyway). I'm curious how it might compare with
>the Jaz and Syjet units, which are somewhat more expensive. The down
>side for me is that, like the other units, it isn't available as a
>(non-OEM) internal Mac SCSI device.
I think their site is http://www.castlewood.com and from memory the
specs are 2.1 gig capacity, $199.00 MSRP, $29.00 per cartridge. The
founder of the company is the "Sy" from Syquest. If it meets all of
its specs it will be as fast as Syquest Sparq and Iomega Jaz units and
much cheaper and more capacious than either. Syquest 1.5 gig drive
MSRP is $299.00 (I saw $255.00 on the net) with cartridges going for
about $80 a piece. Jaz are even more expensive. Castlewood say that
new technology allows a much lower parts count for lower price/higher
reliabity. Due out in March or so, I think. Sorry, I don't recall if
there are different prices/specs for PC vs. Mac versions.
--
John Briggs (jebr...@goodnet.com Phoenix, Arizona, USA) Enemy of the Best