Re: filmscanners: Nikon 8000 ED or Polaroid Sprintscan 120 ??

["Dicky" <corbettr@dircon.co.uk>]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Michael Wilkinson" <michael@infocus-photography.co.uk>
To: <filmscanners@halftone.co.uk>
Sent: Thursday, February 22, 2001 10:24 AM
Subject: Re: filmscanners: Nikon 8000 ED or Polaroid Sprintscan 120 ??


> Art is ,in my opinion ,spot on !
> Drum scanners will have a limited life span,I use one .The  scans can be
> amazingly good,although the tedious system of mounting in oil to get the
> best and reduce dust etc makes me opt for my flatbed whenever I can.
> Some of the better Drum scanners are simpler to use with the originals
> held on the inside of the drum by centrifugal force and you can get a
> lot of originals in as the drums are quit large.
> Scanners like the Imacon are up there with the drums in terms of
> resolution and if you examine how good the "consumer" scanners are now
> you will see that they are on a charge,manufacturers are selling them
> like Hi Fi ,one in every home .
> That means lots of R and D going in to make them better and faster.
> I doubt that the Drum manufacturers with their very narrow sales
> potential will be putting in as much effort.
> You also need to look at what the scans are used for,most go into
> commercial brochures at maybe 8"x12" max ,  who needs "drum quality"
> only to see it squandered on turning it into cmyk dots at maybe 300 to
> the inch ?
> Lots of pro photographers have low end scanners because the do the job
> adequately, for now.

Mr Wilkinson PLEASE!
Everyone likes to talk futures, it's fun and what's more it costs nothing,
and what's even more, anyone can do it.

Soothsaying has been with us always and always will be with us.
Just remember...soothsayers never make money because they never guess right
often enough, but they do spend an inordinate amount of time on the lecture
circuit - in other words they become famous for saying a lot and producing
very little if anything at all.
Actually, while we are at it I will make a soothsay......

"On day, men will walk on Mars".

There, that's a bit of daring do if ever there was one but one might be
forgiven for asking the following addendum of a question which goes as
follows....

"so what".

I was talking about the here and now, the real world of the small business
and not the solo operator, which you will be forced to agree, is real world
current and related directly to the P&L account of many an organisation.

Actually, and while we are at it I will make the following hot button
statement.....

Manufacturers hardly ever use single users as marketing test bed's....please
note I did not say never.

Marketing survey's cover multitudes of users and if you want volume
production that means mass consumer markets.

Professional users of photographic equipment would hardly generate enough
turnover to pay for the manufacturing directors fag's for a year.
The real market is the mass market and the mass market control mostly
everything on the features front.

Most manufacturers with any nous use the odd long term relationship
professional for functional test bed activity but as they will have insisted
on a non-disclosure clause in any agreement, it would hardly be likely that
anyone would know who did what and for whom until long after launch day.
Mind you that never stopped those who like to fiddle about and hope for a
freebe to suggest that they would be prepared to act as a trial site. In my
experience these are the one's to avoid as they usually have far less than a
clue on systermatic evaluation and feed back procedures, by which I mean the
arty/crafty brigade work at a highly subject level of awareness which makes
them entirely unsuited as product testers.

Most of those I have come across would, if so enabled, send the manufacture
into bankruptcy by insisting on more and more alterations to their operating
system.

Professional equipment evaluators are worth their weight in gold and are
rarer than a true blue diamond.

On the other hand it is not uncommon for small organisations to appear
inside the sofware industry functioning as support or product enhancement
suppliers. I once worked for such an organisation as European dealer
manager, and they can and do actually offer special one-off arrangements for
those able to fund the development work. The problem with this is that it
becomes rather necessary for these software organisation to remain in
business, and that is not always what happens.I will speak no more on that
little issue, the pain is with me still (:-)

A much better arrangement is for the hardware manufacturer to work with an
independent software developer who offers them a "special" which they
include in their product package and will include some kind of guarantee to
the customer on the up-grade front as part of the sales offer.

Those organisations who do everything themselves "in house" usually end up
by not supporting software development at the same rate as hardware and thus
are always behind some competitor or other on one or both development
fronts.

Apple were a classic case of this and that is why they fell behind the PC in
market penetration.

As for your statement regarding the "Attila-the-Hun" penetration of new
technology, I might just suggest to you that that hardly ever happens. It
takes a long time between a concept and a real product and development is a
function of what any one manufacturer considers to be "good business" and
that may not include bringing out new revolutionary products every five
minutes.

Drum scanners offer considerable origination flexability, real mass
production capabilities and they can take something of a bashing in day to
day production enviroments.
It is not likely that they will ever dissappear, just slowly slip down the
richter scale of market demand.

Mind you if someone finds a way to manufacturer them and sell at the same
price as the ccd scanner then I know upon whose nose my money would be
placed.

Finally try and remember that one facility that makes a drum scanner unique,
and that is that the greater the enlargement the more detail is actually
recorded at the scanning stage, and that means a quality capability that
will take a long time for the ccd brigade to match (20x magnification? which
ccd device can offer that). If they ever wish to get into the poster
market - a truly huge commercial arena - then something akin to a magic wand
will be required.

Anyone know of a digital magic wand being developed anywhere (:-)

Richard Corbett - and this is the completion of my contribution on this
topic within this thread so over and out.