A "High End Drum Scanner"

 

Since folks have been asking about careers and whining about their cheap, crappy broken scanners, I thought I would talk about the Fuji CELSIS 6250 drum scanner.

 

 

This is a discontinued product that replaced the old Crosfield 646IM.

I forget the specs. They are through the roof, and with the easy availability of cheap scanners that are "good enough" and easy to use, this British designed scanner, which is probably the best ever made, is now an obsolete dinosaur.

Physically, the scanner kinda works like a lathe. Art is mounted on the drum that spins as an analyse head traverses the length of the drum. The mechanics move slower and faster depending on the resolution required of the scan.

 

 

It uses 2 different drum sizes - one is smaller for higher res scans.

There are some fiber optics to deliver light to the art but the light coming into the scanner travels through lense and a "beam splitter" to deliver the light to the red, green and blue filters. From there the light goes to a PMT, Photo Multilier Tube where it is converted to an electronic signal that can be amplified and subsequently modified.

The lamp is a Xenon arc lamp (approx $400)

 

 

 

 

In the old days the scanner was in 2 pieces, basically an analyse unit and an expose unit. The expose unit being a sort of like what was later called an image setter.

Litho film was affixed to a large drum that spun as the laser pulsed out halftone dots onto the film. While the analyse side varied in speed ,the expose side operated at a fixed speed.

The exposure was handled by an Argon Ion (green) laser that allowed the use of standard (red) safelight film.

There wan never an actual complete image file at that point.

Later, "High End Unix Workstations" were created that did a fractin of what Photoshop does today on your laptop. The Crosfield solution was called a "Studio" with some number following it. 950 ?

It was fitted with accelerated processors and lots of ram. It also employed a method of breaking upa large image file into a grid so the operator could work on portions of the image in something akin to real time.

A Studio system and 646 IM scanner and the special room and air conditioning required would set you back almost a million dollars.

The scanner had it's own built in "color computer". It could be semi automated using another computer, complete with twin 7" floppy drives.

To use the scanner's onboard functionality, everything had to be done through this console

 

 

As you access the functions in a modern software package on a happy OS with a pretty GUI by selecting from a menu of functions with pop down subfunctions and then drag sliders and enter numbers - this device required you to presss a specific button (the Cal button) and then enter the number of the function you wanted.

All the functionality was handled in a couple lines on the little LED.

There was no preview of what you were doing to the image - you went by the numbers displayed on the LED. Originally everything was done in CMYK, which is pretty straightforward compared to RGB.

Eventually, the power and speed of personal computers got to an acceptable place and Apple, with their Macintosh OS that catered to printers and Adobe, who supported Macintosh enthusiastically and catered to printers and graphic designers as well, made the Apple PC a viable alternative to the cumbersome old workstations.

The Apple Quadra 950 powerhouse clocked in at 33mhz with 128mb RAM and a 1gb HD for around $10,000.

zoom

For a long time most separations still just went straight to film and then off to an eagerly awaiting stripper.

The software that resided on the scanner was later ported to the Mac OS and, soon the expose unit and the weird little controller computer of the scanner disappeared and a relatively cheap mac was used to control the scanner and receive the scans directly to the hard drive.

Well, actually, the scanner has it's own HD to act as a kind of buffer when the computer can't keep up.

This is the guts of the scanner. After a lot of the functionality got moved to the Mac, it only needed about half the boards it had had.

 

 

For more of the history of this scanner and the company that created it, go to ColorPhil.co.uk

http://www.colourphil.co.uk/crosfield_scanner_intro.html

 

 

Bonus Pic !

 

The Fuji C-550 Lanovia flatbed with it's 14 x 17" platen.

 

The scanners pictured are at Carey Digital in scenic Over the Rhine in Cincinnati

http://www.careydigital.com

 

 

 

 

Wonderful machines. A very good custom lab that was walking distance from my house had an Imacon drum scanner, but I don't know what model it was. They could do just about anything as far as processing and printing, and were wonderful at E-6 medium-format film, but they went out of business last month. As the amateur film-processing and printing business dwindled, there wasn't enough pro lab work to cover the overhead.

 

I have a handful of 4x5 B&W negs that I never got around to having scanned. I suppose I ought to send them out and get them done while there are still places that can do it.

The Film Lab here in Lexington closed this month as well :(

 

What's up with the film lab closures. Now I have to send my work out...

I love the buttons!

I love the buttons!

color coded !

Those keypadss got a workout (3 shifts a day - 7 days a week). I only had to replace one once, tho.

 

The Film Lab here in Lexington closed this month as well :(

What's up with the film lab closures. Now I have to send my work out...

DIGITAL

heck, from what I have read, the manufacturers are ceasing the production of film and chemistry.

It is really strange, being raised on photographs, to see them become some weird old obsolete medium.

I suppose silver prints on fiber-based paper will become an occult art, made only by devotees who make their own paper and emulsion and mix their own chemicals.

 

Add in the effects of peak oil, and one of these days film devotees will be working from wet-plate labs in wagons pulled by mules, and the hard-core guys will be scavenging thermometers and barometers for mercury to make daguerreotypes and getting battier than ever from the fumes. :-o

Its a scanner? It looks like something you'd step inside for cancer treatment.

Its a scanner? It looks like something you'd step inside for cancer treatment.

I always thought the flatbed looked like a baby coffin.