RE: filmscanners: LED Illumination for Film Scanners

[rafeb <rafeb@channel1.com>]

At 09:59 PM 6/20/01 -0400, Austin wrote:

>LEDs have been around for a very long time, and they are reasonably
>inexpensive, as well as very easy to control.  I am sure that if this was
>such a great idea, and the implementation worked near as well as you
>believe, it would have been done some 15-20 years ago as a commercial
>venture, but, alas, it wasn't.


By the same logic, Austin -- Nikon has been using LEDs 
as illuminants in scanners for several years now, yet 
you seem convinced that there's something fundamentally 
wrong with this strategy.

While I've heard many complaints about Nikon scanners 
on this list and others, over the years -- banding has 
not been one of them.

You're right, LEDs have been around for, what -- 30 
years or so now.  The variations in packaging and 
encapsulation are amazing -- there are clear lens-like 
packages, and translucent diffuser-like packages.  
There are monolithic arrays of all shapes and sizes, 
also.  There are board-mount styles and surface-mount.

I can easily imagine packages and monolithich LED arrays 
that allow for very, very close stacking of LEDs, so that 
you could have, say, 20 or 50 or even 100 LEDs per inch.  

Use your imagination, Austin. <g> Is it possible that 
some engineer at Kodak or Nikon has thought of a 
trick with LEDs that hasn't occurred to us yet??
Though I do share your curiosity on just how that 
trick works... maybe a patent search could help here.


rafe b.