howard@mtunj.ATT.COM (H. Moskovitz) (09/08/87)
I am getting ready to put down some $$$ toward an image input device. Question is, should I go for a scanner (the Thunderscan in particular) or a video digitizer. I feel that the digitizer will give me greater flexibility; the question is at what cost to image quality. I would like to hear from folks who have experience with both so that I can get an educated opinion as to the pro's and con's of each. Also, if anyone out there knows of an article either comparing scanner vs digitizer, or comparing the available digitizers (such as Koala MacVision or the MacMagic) please point me to the magazine and issue I can find it (them) in. Thanks in advance. -- ----------------------------------------------------------- Howard Moskovitz AT&T Bell Labs @ Liberty Corner, NJ ihnp4!io!howard
merchant@dartvax.UUCP (Peter Merchant) (09/09/87)
In article <55@mtunj.ATT.COM>, H. Moskovitz writes: > I am getting ready to put down some $$$ toward an image input device. Question > is, should I go for a scanner (the Thunderscan in particular) or a video > digitizer. > > I would like to hear from folks who have experience with both so that I can get > an educated opinion as to the pro's and con's of each. Uh, depends on what you're scanning. If all of your scanning is stuff from books, magazines, photographs, and the like, then get Thunderscan (or better). They give you very good quality from printed material. Unfortunately, you're limitted to pictures. If you wanted to scan something other than a picture, you would not be able to do it. Video scanners give you the flexibility, but at a major cost in quality of the image. I used MacVision (and, admittedly, not a good camera) to try to capture a photograph. It was very difficult to set up and the quality of the final scan was not as good as Thunderscan would have been. However, I also set up the camera on the roof of a building and got some good shots of the Long Island Sound with the Throgs Neck Bridge in the background, something that would be annoying to do with Thunderscan, as I would have to take a photograph and then scan that. One curiousity, for those of you who may have tried this with MacVision: I just recently received a very nice four-head VCR. The feature of the four heads is that when I hit Pause, it does not shake and the image is still very good on the screen. Anyone know what to expect when I feed the image to MacVision? (Just so I know what to expect so I don't get too disappointed.) -- "This time it's forever, Peter Merchant (merchant@dartvax.UUCP) Love is the answer."
gnome@oliveb.UUCP (Gary) (09/16/87)
> > In article <55@mtunj.ATT.COM>, H. Moskovitz writes: > One curiousity, for those of you who may have tried this with MacVision: > I just recently received a very nice four-head VCR. The feature of the > four heads is that when I hit Pause, it does not shake and the image is still > very good on the screen. Anyone know what to expect when I feed the image > to MacVision? (Just so I know what to expect so I don't get too disappointed.) You can actually digitize stuff off of video tape, but the frame that you land on must be really steady and have no vertical or horizontal jitter. In general, video tape has too little resolution and horizontal stability to be used for any quality digitizing. I have had decent results with the MacVision unit, but off-camera is much better (especially with a decent camera)! Since I have spent a lot of time digitizing non-flexible or non-flat things, the Thunderscan is out of the question. Gary