Microtek 4850 Scanner Woes

[jtr1962]

My mom recently purchased a Microtek 4850 scanner from WorstBuy(special sale $99.99). Her reason for choosing that particular model was that it came with a slide and negative adaptor, and also that it is capable of 2400 dpi native resolution. Unfortunately, since it's USB and her Pentium doesn't have USB ports, it had to be hooked up to my machine. Good thing as well, since scanning negatives at 2400 dpi quickly uses up even the 768 MB of RAM in my machine. The 96 MB in my mom's machine would be totally inadequate, to say nothing of the 200 MHz processor speed.

Anyway, after hooking up the scanner it was only intermittantly recognized. I managed to do a few scans and then turned it off. For some stupid reason the light stays on all the time, making it necessary to "pull the plug" whenever I'm not doing scans. My older scanner only turns on the light whenever I acquire an image. Normally, this wouldn't be much of a problem, except that upon plugging it back in getting the scanner to initialize was hit or miss. At first I thought I might have a defective scanner but since it worked properly at least once I figured that probably wasn't the cause. Today when I tried to get the scanner to recognize the light only came on momentarily. On a whim I decided to check the voltage coming from the AC adapter. Sure enough, it was zero. Some more testing revealed that the voltage was intermittant. Jigging the wire made it rise to 12, and then for no reason it would start fluctuating. Evidently this is the cause of the problem, and my mom will try to exchange the adaptor tomorrow at WorstBuy.

What bothers me about this whole situation is why the f*ck does everybody nowadays insist on using these stupid outlet hogging adaptors instead of just running a power cord to the device and doing the voltage conversion internally(like my HP 940c Deskjet does)? And second, why does Microtek put what has to be one of the shitiest adaptors I've ever seen with what otherwise seems to be a fairly decent scanner(at least judging by the quality of the scans I've gotten)? And why does the light stay on all the time? If this isn't the single dumbest thing I've ever seen I don't know what is. Life of a cold cathode fluorescent tube is maybe 10,000 hours. My computer is usually on. This means a bulb replacement in maybe 14 months if I didn't notice it. Evidently engineers(and software designers) today lack common sense. The most important part of any electronic device is the power supply. A poor power supply can cause intermittant operation or worse. Why use an off the shelf adaptor that gives you no control over parameters rather than designing the power supply into the device? I doubt it adds much to the cost, especially considering the dissatisfaction and return rates this POS adaptor will probably cause. I can only hope the replacement adaptor will work better or else I'll be stuck building my own power supply for this thing.

 

[Mercutio]

Step 1. Take the stupid thing back. The whole thing, not just the adaptor
Step 2. Take slides n' stuff to Walgreens. They'll do a better job and they'll d hordes of slides for the price of that scanner, plus you're not sitting around waiting for your poor PC.
Step 3. Pour yourself a nice, cool glass of NyQuil to celebrate all the time, money and aggravation you have saved you and everyone you love.

 

[Howell]

The light on my HP USB scanner stays on for a while but not days. I guess maybe 15 minutes. You'ld think there would be a software setting to adjust this. The tube has to warm up before it can scan. THis can take maybe a minute.

 

[jtr1962]

Merc,

Between slides, negatives, and pictures(including many old B&W ones dating back up to 100+ years) I would estimate we have at least 10,000 pictures, if not more. I'm not sure Walgreen's would be a viable solution cost-wise. I'm also not sure if I can trust the typical employees in these stores not to lose or damage anything. The employees in the service sector in NYC are among the least educated and competent in the country thanks in large part to the public schools here. I just don't trust them with anything too technical or important, period. In fact, that's one reason I do everything around here-electrical work, ceramic tile, concrete work, gardening, painting, etc. You just can't find good workers even if you pay top dollar around here.

If the new adaptor gives similar problems I think I will entertain your suggestion of just bringing the entire thing back(and looking for something else). I shouldn't have to make or buy a custom power supply for a brand new piece of equipment even if I'm capable of doing so.

I will definitely take NyQuil or have a good stiff drink tonight. I owe myself that after all the aggravation.

BTW, this archiving project will be a long-term thing which I expect to last at least a year. The main purpose of digitizing everything is to put it within easy access, and also to safeguard it from further deterioration and theft/vandalism/natural disasters/terrorism. I plan to distribute the picture CDs to as many family members as possible(off-site redundant backup) and I plan to scan many of my more important papers so I can get rid of them physically and make some room in my filing cabinets.

Howell,

I'm not sure if the light here turns off automatically after a time period. Once I get it working reliably I'll test that out. My other scanner actually has a warm-up period of about a minute before it starts scanning for the reasons you say. I find I need to let it go for two before the scan quality is consistent. The fluorescent bulb color spectrum shifts until the tube is at operating temperature. BTW, anyone here know what color temperature the scanner tubes usually are in case I ever need replacements? They look like 6500K to me but I'm not sure. I recently bought 6500K tubes for my bedroom fixture and the spectrum looks similar. Off topic, but I also went from cool whites(4100K) to sunlight(5000K) in my workroom downstairs. Besides superior color rendering(CRI=90), the light quality is perfect for a workroom, and about as white as you can get. I picked 6500K for my bedroom to create a more relaxing atmosphere, but here again it's a huge improvement over the cool whites.

 

[SteveC]

BTW, this archiving project will be a long-term thing which I expect to last at least a year. The main purpose of digitizing everything is to put it within easy access, and also to safeguard it from further deterioration and theft/vandalism/natural disasters/terrorism. I plan to distribute the picture CDs to as many family members as possible(off-site redundant backup) and I plan to scan many of my more important papers so I can get rid of them physically and make some room in my filing cabinets.

I've been doing the same thing for about the past year. Most of the pictures I have are 10-50 years old, and range from fair to poor condition. I also have a box of thousands of slides, which are all at least 25 years old, with most 50-60 years old. The condition of the slides ranges from poor to very poor to extremely poor condition. I've put off doing the slides for now simply because it's not practical to scan that many on a flat bed. A dedicated slide scanner would be much easier, and produce better results.

If you're organized, the scanning should go fairly quickly, but depending on the quality of your photos, the touch up it where the real time is spent. Once they are scanned, though, you can take your time with the restoration part. Just be sure to keep multiple copies on your hard drive and CD, in case something happens to one or the other. Also, give them meaningful names, and keep them sorted in categories, so it makes finding the one you want easier.

 

[Mercutio]

Realize that commercial bulk scanning of 10k images is going to hit $3k, easy, and the time investment for doing it at home with a crappy flatbed will be, well, outrageous (probably at least a couple months of eight hour days, just for scanning).

I think you really need to look at a dedicated slide/negative scanner, jtr. Not an adaptor that connects to a cheap flatbed, I mean a real slide scanner. I'd guess they start at about $350.

I'm sure Splash or certain other members can explain all about this stuff, but I do know a cheap flatbed is the wrong tool for the job.

 

[Handruin]

When I worked at the vet school, I spent countless hours working the scanning machines to scan hundreds and hundreds of slides. We used two methods, the first method was a Nikon slide scanner with an auto feed attachment, the other was an Epson flatbed with a transparency adapter.

The Nikon solution was complete garbage. Even though it had a 50-count auto-loader, the stupid thing jammed and double-fed all the time. I basically had to baby-sit the stupid thing. All in all, it did a decent job scanning when it worked.

The Epson (don't recall the model #) was rather unique in that it had a plastic grid that you could layout 10 slides. Then, using the software, I select the ten slides and have the scanner scan them all at the same time, yet I ended up with individual images.

There was a third option if you have the means to do so. Being as I was interning in the media center, we strived to find a better and faster solution to duplicate slides. Being as it was a vet school, they had an immense amount of slides that had to be digitized. One solution that in the end fell through was to use an SLR digital camera with a slide mount to digitize the slides and pictures.

The camera was a Kodak 6 Mega pixel. This was over 3 years ago, so a camera of that caliber was going to cost the department $30,000 USD. This camera had a 450 MB laptop hard drive in the base and we transfer images by plugging the drive into an external PCMCIA card reader.

They never bought the camera, but it did help us in productivity by at least 4x the production level.

I don't know how helpful this post is, but the truth is, it becomes a full-time job to manage even a few thousand images.

 

[jtr1962]

I think you really need to look at a dedicated slide/negative scanner, jtr. Not an adaptor that connects to a cheap flatbed, I mean a real slide scanner. I'd guess they start at about $350.

I'm sure Splash or certain other members can explain all about this stuff, but I do know a cheap flatbed is the wrong tool for the job.

I'm seriously entertaining that thought, especially if I can't get this scanner to work properly. I'd like Splash's input on this as well. Although the quality seems decent enough, scanning negatives with this thing is like watching paint dry. I'm currently debating whether to scan prints instead of negatives. Being that commercial printing processes vary widely, I tend to think negatives would offer more consistent quality but I could be wrong. I also realized I seriously need to clean this room and keep a can of compressed air handy as a grain of dust at 2400 dpi is quite noticeable.

 

[jtr1962]

I don't know how helpful this post is, but the truth is, it becomes a full-time job to manage even a few thousand images.

As I discovered already since I have scans of various important papers, tax forms, receipts, rebate forms, etc. Just giving images a sensible name rather than something like IMG_4013.JPG and keeping them in descriptive folders helps a great deal.

As for the rest of your post, I like the digital camera idea at least speed-wise. Right now a 5 or 6 megapixel camera can be had in the range of $1K or so, although an SLR like you mentioned would be quite a bit more. The only problems I see with it over a dedicated slide or negative scanner would be resolution. I think the effective resolution of many films is 8 to 20 megapixels, so there may be some information lost. Truth is though scanning at 2400 dpi gives me an effective resolution of about 8 megapixels so I'm not really doing that much better anyway, and the camera would be easily 100x faster. I don't know about dedicated negative scanners speedwise, so I can't make a comparison there.

Most of our future pictures should be digital since my mom just bought a nice 2 megapixel camera. I plan to get one myself in the 3 to 5 megapixel range once the price drops under about $250(or I have a few good months business-wise).

Off topic, but I wasn't aware that you worked at a vet school. I've always felt a vet had to be better than a human doctor as he/she must know many different types of physiologies, and the patients can't let you know what's wrong. Vets have always had my respect both for what they do and the fact that they really don't make a killing financially(which means they do it for love, not money), which is more than can be said for human doctors(many of whom don't give a sh*t about curing people but just want $$).

 

[jtr1962]

I also have a box of thousands of slides, which are all at least 25 years old, with most 50-60 years old. The condition of the slides ranges from poor to very poor to extremely poor condition. I've put off doing the slides for now simply because it's not practical to scan that many on a flat bed. A dedicated slide scanner would be much easier, and produce better results.

I thought I had my work cut out for me. Digitally fixing those is what's going to be the real time killer. The negatives I did just required a bit of contrast and light level adjustment. It was cool seeing what some of them looked like for the first time since a few were pictures that the stupid automated development process thought were unprintable because they were too dark. One was of the WTC Plaza on July 4, 1992. It made me sick thinking that doesn't exist any more.

 

[Handruin]

Not to take your topic too far off course, but I worked at Tufts University School of veterinary medicine for almost a year. I did a half semester internship with them in their media department as I was working for my BS in communications/media - multimedia and then I was hired as a full-time employee to work in the library as a curricular support specialist. (not that the title meant much)

My thoughts are right on with yours. I never worked with any of the Doctors when it came to practicing medicine on animals; I only dealt with their presentation material for teaching. But as you've mentioned, the toughest part is that the animal can't communicate as humans do. They can either cry in pain, or say nothing at all. Somewhere in the middle those vets need to determine the problem.

The sad thing about working at a vet school is that 95% of the material I encountered was related to sick or unhealthy animals. It's a learning school, so they have to use those as learning examples, so I understand. I could probably put my Avion Radiology project online if anyone is curious. (or would like a laugh) I was learning macromedia's authorware when I built this project and I ran out of time in my internship so it was never finished.

I suspect that only the very experienced vets make a decent amount of money, but for the most part, it probably isn't as much as they deserve. They go to school just as long and study equally as hard as a human doctor would; yet they make less because of the lack of a true health care system for animals. They do have some rather odd practices at Tufts when it comes to psychology. They give cats and dongs Prozac and all sorts of weird medications to combat anxiety and whatnot.

 

[The JoJo]

I've been scanning some of my parents old slides with an Epson 24xx flatbed scanner. My mom's computer is a P3 550 with ~400MB RAM. This is going to take forever...

Does anyone have any insight into the already mentioned dedicated slide scanners? Any info would be helpful.

 

[jtr1962]

Update 1: Scanner was exchanged today for a new one since they wouldn't exchange only the adaptor. The new one at first just hung there without initializing. I called tech support which recommended to uninstall and reinstall the software. Normally this is a waste of time but seeing as nothing else I was doing worked, I decided to give it a shot. Bingo, next time around it initialized once I plugged it into the USB port and I made a few scans. I rebooted the machine just to make sure everything was OK and it was back to not being recognized. Turns out there's a bug in the software which requires you to have the scanner unplugged from the USB port whenever the computer is rebooted. Once Windows comes up, you plug it in and it's just fine. Tech support said to download a USB patch for Win98. Not sure what it's for, but I'll install it later and see if it fixes the not detecting upon bootup problem.

Update 2:The light can be programmed in software to turn off after a set period of inactivity. Default was 15, I set it to 5.

The only minor problem besides the bootup one, assuming the patch doesn't correct it, are the two processes that the scanner software has running in the background. Normally I wouldn't worry about this, but a few weeks ago I decided to eliminate everything that loads upon bootup as my system was getting annoyingly unstable(as in needing to be rebooted at least daily). This seemed to fix everything, and on the day I first installed the scanner I actually had over 10 days of uptime which included a lot of Internet browsing. I just hope the scanner software doesn't start ruining my stability again. BTW, why is it that every new piece of hardware nowadays seems to have software that insists on running one or more things besides drivers in the background all the time? Any novice user will soon find their system mysteriously crashing more and more. Is it such a big deal for this other software to just launch whenever the device in question is being used? And I won't even get started on all the junk like findfast that M$ Office insists on installing. I think there were about five things running in the background after I first installed it, all of which were promptly removed.