1. old software - For 5-15K hardware keeping dedicated $100 2007 iMac is a non issue. No need to upgrade when it does what its supposed to do.<p>2. "3,000 Euro repair bill" “The problem is when the FireWire port dies the only repair that is ever proven to be effective has been to replace the entire main board.” is BS from repair company. Where do they get the replacement boards from? answer is they dont, they fix it by replacing $1 component and charging for knowledge and rarity. You are paying for secret knowledge of where to hit the machine with hammer. Hasselblad neither manufactures chips nor ordered custom Firewire controller just for this very niche product. Someone like STS Telecom (<a href="https://www.ststele.com" rel="nofollow">https://www.ststele.com</a> <a href="https://www.youtube.com/@ststele/videos">https://www.youtube.com/@ststele/videos</a>) or iPad Rehab (<a href="https://www.ipadrehab.com/" rel="nofollow">https://www.ipadrehab.com/</a> <a href="https://www.youtube.com/@JessaJones/videos">https://www.youtube.com/@JessaJones/videos</a>) will be able to do the repair at reasonable (compared to $3K) cost without overcharging for working on rare professional photography hardware. As a bonus they will happily publish reverse engineering results so others can also repair their scanners in the future. The issue might be as trivial and simple as bad capacitors in need of a recap, this is 15 year old hardware after all.
So, I missed the suggestion thread, but here's mine: hack together a DIY microscope scanning rig. It'll set you back less than 500 dollars. An open frame 3D printer like a Creality CR-10S can be had for a few hundred - that's your stage, complete with controller electronics. Replace the hotend with a bracket for a Pi Cam HQ - it's a decent 12MP sensor - and add a microscope lens [0]. Put a lightbox on the bed, then your film, then the thinnest piece of glass you can find to hold it down. Now you can easily raster-scan at over 17000dpi. You can even make minute depth adjustments using the vertical axis of the stage to correct for film flatness issues.<p>I'm sure there are many objections to this setup - I know resolution isn't everything and I'm unsure if a Sony IMX477 sensor is "good enough" for the author in terms of color and dynamic range - but you can't argue with the price!<p>[0]<a href="https://shop.pimoroni.com/products/microscope-lens-0-12-1-8x?variant=31885093371987" rel="nofollow">https://shop.pimoroni.com/products/microscope-lens-0-12-1-8x...</a>
I assume the author knows their stuff about why consumer scanners aren’t good enough, particularly around dynamic range. However, for black and white film, I’m generally able to make out the crystal grain on 35mm with my consumer scanner and included tray, so I don’t know what more there is to resolve.
<a href="https://epson.com/fastfoto-photo-document-scanner" rel="nofollow">https://epson.com/fastfoto-photo-document-scanner</a><p>If anyone needs to scan through bulk printed photos, I used this device to scan all my mom's stored photos for her wedding gift. I scanned over 12,000 photos over hte course of a few months so I couldn't bother with raising a lid. This thing makes short work of 20-30 photos per batch and it does a great job at scanning them. I host a small pikapod that has them tagged by a rudimentary AI for their faces and other objects. It was a fun little project and warmed my heart.
> I partially agree - but without the patent system where does the incentive for companies to invest millions (sometimes billions) into research and development come from? Altruism?<p>This presupposes that the patented invention is trivial to reproduce by mere knowledge of its existence - in which case, is that really the best use of a patent system?<p>Most worthwhile inventions can't be easily duplicated like that; the knowledge of how to manufacture it, continue iterating/improving on it, etc. is almost certainly concentrated in and around the inventor - giving the inventor a considerable first-mover's advantage. A better system, in that case, would be to ensure the inventor can capitalize on that advantage - in particular, that even individual inventors have access to capital such that they can start producing their inventions.<p>(A better system than <i>that</i> would be for everyone to have a safety net sufficiently strong such that they can collaborate on inventions solely motivated by intellectual curiosity rather than needing to worry about monetary gain, but I digress...)
Often commercial software has tons of closed-source libraries that they don’t have the source code to. Even Doom had that when opensourced. It’s an annoying headache for a company to open source even for a project no longer in development.
> if you patent something and don’t act on it in X years then it enters the public domain. If you discontinue the thing that relies on the patent then it enters the public domain. And so on.<p>people have an extremely limited view of patents to suggest this.<p>so you're working a 9-5, spent all of your savings on getting a patent because you did perceive something everyone else neglected, and people on the internet are like "go form a startup and raise capital, or else"! that's not what they say, but they don't think about what they say. they imagine a person with a toolkit in a garage or writing software and that's it, and then imagine creating and monetizing that one thing is the best use of their time, otherwise the idea shouldn't have been contributed to society at all. funny, who living in an economic center and has a garage anyway?<p>until we can have a real discussion on patenting and patent holders, as well as the incentives in making the patent claims broader and more generic than the inventor really had in mind, this conversation will go nowhere.
Not exactly relevant for hi-def pro photography, but if you're struggling to scan paper photos, and you can't find a proper scanner, a hybrid solution that kind of works is to take a low-res scan (using any tech, even a phone) and enhance the result / augment the resolution using some kind of AI software suite or online SaaS.
I had always been impressed with the fidelity of the Kai’s Power Goo example facial images.<p><a href="https://www.macworld.com/article/226834/an-ode-to-kais-power-goo.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.macworld.com/article/226834/an-ode-to-kais-power...</a><p>I believe a drum scanner was used.
In a parallel fashion, I haven't delved very far into the topic, but I have a feeling I wouldn't be able to get any of my trusty old SCSI devices working, both from a motherboard and a driver perspective.
Naive question incoming:<p>Does a good modern camera with a macro lens, shooting from a few inches away, have a higher effective DPI than this scanner?<p>If so, is the only problem trying to get a predictable, smooth grid of pictures from such a camera to stitch together?<p>And if so, couldn't you just stick the camera to... a CNC machine, say? Is that not a thing?
I also have an old Mustek scanner with outdated drivers, with no hardware issues.<p>Luckily, my scanner is USB, and VMware Workstation allows to forward complete USB devices to a guest OS. When I need to scan something, I fire up a virtual machine with 32-bits Windows XP inside, with OG drivers, and scanning software.
Definitely true point about the Hasselblad. They make their money through legacy and brand these days. There are plenty of medium format competitors that outperform them at a far lower price.