Topic: I have seen the God of film scanners

[lauraburlton]

Last night I was at school and Will showed me the film scanner he uses at work ( he works for the Museum of Fine Arts) WOW, they have an Imacon scanner, its almost 20K, but it was f**king amazing! It scans all film formats up to 4 x 5 and its really fast. He enlarged a negative from a 120 film about 20X and all you could see was film grain, no pixels. I wanna work for the museum, I would be scanning all day I told him he should keep that thing a secret because everyone will want to use it and as its about the cost of a small flat, no one is going to be buying one soon. All I can say is WOW. It was amazing. Also John R- your portrait looks really nice The one he has on his site is also a scan from film.

[outofcontxt]

Hmmmmm... maybe I could take out a home equity loan... ;-)

[lauraburlton]

For real, it was amazing BUT I dunno if I would mortgage my house for it. Its the kind of thing I dont really see going down in price really as it is for large format film and smaller but maybe one day on the used market it could go for 5K. But hey , maybe by then you can get an all dancing all singing flatbead that would do just as good. One can only hope. Mind you, I am not too sure why I care that much, as all I do is scan stuff to put on the web...

[outofcontxt]

Since I currently print to an archival inkjet, something like this would be a dream come true. The extremely high dMax for maximum shadow detail and the huge size of the files would make this puppy ideal for super large prints. It's the closest thing to a drum scanner that you can get. Let's see... when's the next lotto drawing? ;-)

[warren]

We have two of the Imacon FlexTights at work as well as the larger Imacon Progression (God-Bless government spending). They really do output the ultimate. The Progression also has a glass flatbed for various purposes. I saw some glass negs go through that thing with amazing results. Unfortunately, being government property, it's off-limits. A guy can still dream....

[lauraburlton]

Damn! You work there and still cant play with the toys? Whats the world come to these days...

[outofcontxt]

That's the gov'ment for you...

[warren]

Yeah, it's the ultimate frustration. I managed to get a few 4x5 scans done about a year ago as a training exercise. I think I need to be retrained....

[lauraburlton]

yes you do, train often and well. Toys like that should not go to waste!