ESSEX-UK-L Archives

Archiver > ESSEX-UK > 2000-05 > 0957637804


From: "Stuart Overall" <>
Subject: RE: Scanning Fiche - Off Topic
Date: Sat, 6 May 2000 19:30:04 +0100
In-Reply-To: <3913FE4B.6D3C7920@omninet.net.au>


May I suggest that you give up this idea folks. A standard flatbed scanner
cannot hope to produce the necessary resolution. The best you can do is 600
dpi. Forget about the higher figures quoted as they are invariably
"interpolated" resolutions. In other words the scanner makes up extra dots
on the basis of the ones around it. This does not help when scanning fiche
as the dots are either black or white and there is nothing helpful in
between.
I own a negative scanner which works up to 2400 dpi real resolution and I
have tried it out on microfiche. The machine is intended for 35mm negative
so I had to chop my microfiche up! The scanner would not accept the slices
of fiche as negative strip as there are of course no sprocket holes. I cut
it smaller and fed it in as mounted slide. The results were readable but not
stunning. My optical character recognition software was far from happy.
Basically the whole enterprise was not very successful.
There are scanners which can cope with this job but the costs are serious.
If anyone would like a copy of my scanned effort just ask. It is a 143kb
jpeg barely indistinguishable from the 343kb uncompressed tif. It shows one
frame from a fiche which originally held 288 frames.

Stuart Overall


This thread: