Luminous Landscape Forum
Equipment & Techniques => Computers & Peripherals => Topic started by: ChuckT on May 22, 2013, 07:52:59 am
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(I have no financial interest in these folks).
Just got an Email from Hasselblad/Bron: “Between now and May 31, 2013 you can get $6,000 off the price of a Hasselblad Flextight X5 scanner and $4,000 off a Hasselblad Flextight X1 scanner when you trade in your old scanner, regardless of make or model*." and '*Price before/after trade-in rebate: Flextight X5- $24,995/$18,995, Flextight X1- $15,995/$11,995."
Clearing out old new-stock? Or getting out of the Scanner business? I certainly don't know. Our X5 is a speed champ (this is good) but lacks "ICE" (this is bad) and the Flextight software, which is extremely transparency-centric, hasn't been updated in a looong time.
Sayonara FlexTight???
cvt
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Same deal has been offered until 30 November 2014. (at least here in Europe).
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Getting into an old-school high-end film scanner at this point would be like buying a CRT monitor, except worse as the service/support/development of these systems has really fallen off. No meaningful R+D has gone into them in a decade.
Of course I'm extremely biased and self-interested in saying this since we've developed a Film Scanning System (http://www.dtdch.com/page/dt-film-scanning-kit) which is, without marketing exaggeration, 200 times faster than using a traditional film scanner, and can match any drum scanner in quality.
It's not magic - technology has simply moved on in the decade since film scanner R+D dried up.
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I used a 4-shot 39 MP back for years. It did a great job with film formats ranging from 110 to 8 X 10. I used a modified Polaroid MP-4 copy stand (XL column) and rigged up a strobe backlight using an Elinchrom Quadra and a small Chimera soft box with some opal glass thrown into the mix for extra diffusion. The results were stunning, and the light was even throughout the field. I had a sweet X, Y, R compound for moving film larger than 645--useful for precise stitching. The ranger provided more than ample light and it was great dialing the power on the strobe instead of changing f/stops on the lens. That way, I was always able to use the the best aperture and didn't have to touch the lens for bracketing exposures. The entire rig, without camera, strobe, and soft box came in under $1,250 (including an anthro cart to anchor the copy stand). I shot tethered and focused remotely without touching the lens.
Hasselblad's multi-shot solutions are used at the treasury dept, Harvard, Boston Public Library, Boston Museum of Fine Art, and tons of other museums and gov't. institutions. There are lots of ways to skin a cat when it comes to hi-res digital capture of flat media. I'm surprised the guy at the NY public library wasn't handling the original art with gloves. Oh well...