I Bought A Scanner (No, Really This Time)

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# I Bought A Scanner (No, Really This Time)

![:scale 70%](img/files.jpeg)

(Hit "P" for the notes and "?" for help)

???

* Yep, it's time for the biennial "Lee gives a talk about photography at the German Perl Workshop and tenuously links it to software engineering"

* Lots of photographic projects

* Lots of film, as some of these I started shooting a long time ago

* I don't have any particular loyalty or attraction to film, It's just that I started shooting many of these projects before affordable medium format digital was available

* In fact, it's a pain in the arse to shoot film now given the cost, availability, and issues around traveling with it (modern airport CT scanners, hence me not having my usual camera with me here)

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class: center, middle

# I Bought A Scanner (No, Really This Time)

![:scale 75%](img/binders.jpeg)

Lee Johnson (LEEJO / leejo / lee@payprop.com)

(Hit "P" for the notes and "?" for help)

???

* Oh yeah, even more film

* In that bottom binder there's another 3,000 or so frames of various projects

* The top one is various random rolls of film from the last 20 years, probably another 1,000 frames or so.

* Want to scan to the highest possible quality (within reason)

* For: archiving, book projects, and large prints

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# How Large?

![:scale 50%](img/big_pano.png)

???

160x60cm panoramics for selling

This is restricted by the size of my printer (that's another story)

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# Three Years Ago

![:scale 80%](img/og_blog_post.png)

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* I almost bought a scanner

* Blogged about it

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# Three Years Ago

![:scale 100%](img/hn.png)

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* The blog post got a bit of traction on HN

* I'm never quite sure which posts I submit will pique the interest of the users

* I'll spend months chipping away at a draft and when I post it it tanks. Or I'll cobble something together in twenty minutes, like this one, and it gets 440 points and over 300 comments...

* The thread had some useful suggestions, and some not so useful ones

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# Fifteen Years Ago

![:scale 75%](img/epson.jpeg)

???

* A lot of the not so useful ones being effectively "buy an Epson"

* I've had one for fifteen years

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# Ten Years Ago

![:scale 70%](img/epson_nope.jpg)

???

* It's not good enough for large prints

* Or archiving

* It's passable for web stuff and smaller prints

* Ten years ago I had negatives scanned with a hi res scanner for the first time, you can see a 100% crop on the left there. On the right is the Epson scanner.

* Recently, wanting to scan my archives for various projects I decided I should invest in one of those hi res scanners

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# The Original Plan

* Buy scanner (at significantly reduced rate)

* Scan all my film

* Sell scanner

* Profit!

???

And I mean profit - the scanner that I almost bought was being offered to me at about 2/3rd of the price they usually sell.

And they're becoming harder to find in working order so the prices are going up.

![:scale 100%](img/cost_per_frame.png)

* https://www.thefilmlab.ch/high-res-scanning

???

+++

Or profit in not having to pay > 25.- CHF per frame to have someone else do this

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# The Scanner In Question

![:scale 80%](img/og_scanner.jpg)

???

* On the left, I'll talk about it in more detail shortly

* Some of you are probably looking at the Mac and trying to recall which model? It's the 2007 Aluminium iMac.

* So yeah, a decade plus discontinued computer.

* I did manage to get the scanner running with a 2015 Macbook Pro.

* But still: discontinued and unsupported.

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# The Scanner In Question

* A Hasselblad Imacon Flextight X1

* Offered to me at: 5,000 EUR

![:scale 65%](img/msrp.png)

???

Reading from my blog post here...

This thing is remarkable. The bigger brother (the X5) even more so. Imacon/Hasselblad had a load of patents on the technology that means no other manufacturer can replicate it. There are other high spec scanning solutions, of course, but none that come close to this form factor.

The scanner is relatively simple - a clever mechanism to ensure the film stays flat (a “virtual drum”), a good quality constant light source, a very expensive and extremely high quality Rodenstock lens that has its focus precisely adjusted for every single scan, and a decent quality CCD to capture the image (scan). This is all held inside a mostly empty box.

The history is that Hasselblad merged with Imacon in 2004 for their digital back / CCD technology. This is because Hasselblad were interested in creating digital backs for their, at the time, H range of medium format cameras. The scanners were included as part of the deal with the deal stating that Hasselblad had to honour that for at least x years (15 years maybe?).

15 years passed, at which point Hasselblad discontinued the scanners. The cost of modernising the components and interfaces was not worth it. In fact, only 7 years passed before Hasselblad effectively discontinued them as that was when they stopped updating the software.

So you now have a not-insignificant number of owners of these scanners that are approaching end of life with little option to replace or repair them.

* So why "almost"?

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# Hard and Soft Problems

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* The software that drives the scanner was last updated in 2012

* Proprietary, closed source
 * Requires 32bit architecture
 * No third party drivers or software exist. None.

???

* So you are stuck using old software/computers to run it

* Or maybe you could use emulation / virtualisation?

* The interface is firewire

* Or SCSI on the even older models
 * Firewire known to be problematic on these scanners

???

+++

* They go bad after a decade of continued use

* Which is exactly what this one showed symptoms of

* The scanner was very much EOL as the firewire port(s) were dying

* Given *both* ports were bad that suggests controller, not ports
 * €5,000 to purchase
 * €3,000 (ish) to repair

???

+++

* Or, as HN suggested - just open it up and use a soldering iron

* I'm not going to drop 5k on something and *then* start poking it with a soldering iron

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# Camera Scanning

![:scale 45%](img/camera_scanning.jpeg)

???

So instead I've been camera scanning

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# Camera Scanning

???

How does that compare?

--
* Expensive

* High Resolution Camera
 * Macro Lens
 * Cable Release
 * Copy Stand
 * Negative Carrier/Holder
 * Quality Light Source

???

How expensive?

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# Camera Scanning

![:scale 80%](img/negative_carrier.png)

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This is just the negative carrier, and this is one of the cheaper options

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# Camera Scanning

![:scale 100%](img/camera_scanning_kit.png)

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You'll look to spend anything from three to eight thousand Euro on everything

And if you've already got a high resolution camera why exactly are you shooting film?

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# Camera Scanning

* Expensive

* High Resolution Camera
 * Macro Lens
 * Cable Release
 * Copy Stand
 * Negative Carrier/Holder
 * Quality Light Source
 
* Works well, but a bit of a pain in the arse

???

Works well in that it's close to a high resolution dedicated scanner

But you have to setup the entire thing whenever you want to use it

Including ensuring everything is straight and parallel

--
* Suffers from the same weakness as most other scanning methods

???

+++

What do you think that is?

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# Film Flatness

Or lack thereof:

![:scale 80%](img/film_not_flat.jpg)

???

* Film is rarely flat, especially so with 35mm. These are pretty mild examples of curl.

* It tends to be flatter in the larger formats but then you get into flatness issues due to it sagging

* The smallest difference in the film plane can cause major issues in sharpness due to focus fall off (film scanning is essentially macro photography)

* Any workflow or solution that does not take this into account is significantly compromised. And the workflow is only as good as its weakest part.

* This is the biggest problem in scanning film - all other considerations are more than adequate these days: resolution, dynamic range, etc.

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# Solving Film Flatness?

* Negative carriers

???

Most of these don't keep the film perfectly flat

![:scale 80%](img/eod.jpg)

* Anti Newton Glass

???

+++

This has always been a problem - this is from a book called "Edge of Darkness"

Which is about traditional analog photography and printing

So you have to use ANR glass

Which introduces other issues

* Drum Scanning

???

+++

Absurdly impractical from a cost and operating point of view

* Flextight

???

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# Interim Solution?

* Camera scanning...

* Wasn't happy though

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Because of film flatness and the setup faff

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# Finding Another Scanner

![:scale 100%](img/precision_ii.png)

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* I was idly browsing about 6 months back and came across this one

* It's exactly the same spec as the one I tried three years ago

* Except SCSI not Firewire so less prone to failure

* Just predates Hasselblad buying Imacon... (rebranding, etc)

* In Switzerland so I could inspect and pick it up

* Significantly cheaper

* So worth a punt even if I needed to take a soldering iron to it

* So we went to St Gallen for a weekend and I picked it up

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# First Scans...

![:scale 45%](img/scanner_second.jpeg)

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# First Scans...

![:scale 75%](img/interface.jpeg)

???

* Look at that marvelous interface!

* None of that liquid glass bollocks

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# First Scans...

![:scale 60%](img/ferrari_fan.jpg)

???

* Hungary 2015

* I think this lady might be a Ferrari fan...

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# First Scans...

* Were OK, but I had the sense things needed some TLC

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# Focus Calibration

* Focus Slide [Maybe] Included:

![:scale 50%](img/focus_slide.png)

???

* I was lucky that this was included

* Not sure what I would have done otherwise

* Probably paid a fortune for a replacement?

* No other way to calibrate the focus?

* Possibly a lot of manual trial and error with the software

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# Focus Calibration

![:scale 50%](img/dpi_scan.jpeg)

???

After doing that I scanned images of the 1951 USAF resolution test chart

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# Focus Calibration

![:scale 75%](img/dpi_scan2.jpeg)

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That's the interface

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# Focus Calibration

![:scale 100%](img/35mm_100usm_6300_20251201_2000.jpg)

???

And that's what the resulting scan looked like

Notice that it's sharp from edge to edge, corner to corner

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# Focus Calibration

![:scale 100%](img/35mm_100usm_6300_20251201_closeup.jpg)

???

And at 100% crop we can resolve around 110 to 123 line pairs per mm

Which equates to about 5,600 to 6,300 DPI

This is beyond the limit of most 35mm lenses

But importantly - exactly to spec for this scanner

So I was happy the focus was calibrated

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# Focus Calibration

![:scale 100%](img/35mm_100usm_6300_20251201_closeup_gfx.jpg)

???

If you're curious this is the same target scanned used with the camera scanning setup

It's close

But we've got another variable in the workflow, several even, and that impacts the result

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# Power Supply

* "Sometimes it takes five minutes to warm up"

![:scale 75%](img/old_power.jpeg)

???

* Another issue that needed fixing

* An absolute power brick

* Sometimes more than five minutes

* And the power supply would click click click

* So not surprising

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# Power Supply

![:scale 75%](img/new_power.jpeg)

???

* Easy enough to find replacements

* 200 Euros, so expensive however

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# Belts

* Scans coming out stretched - about 10% too wide?

* Sometimes more than that
 * Panoramics looked Panoooooooramic

???

* Did some research - someone said "buffering issue", which I thought was nonsense

* Also some slipping sounds audible when scanning

???

+++

* Did more research - belts need replacing.

* So I opened the scanner up

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# Belts

![:scale 40%](img/IMG_9041.jpeg)

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A ha!

You can't quite see that the one on the back is even worse

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# Belts

![:scale 40%](img/IMG_9046.jpeg)

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* I replaced those

* 50 Euros (I bought two sets)

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# Film Holders

![:scale 75%](img/holders.png)

???

* Bought new ones, as the old ones had been mishandled

* 350 Euros for the four I needed

* They're now available cheaper from China

* Since the patents have expired. Or, you know, China

* They used to cost about 200 Euros *each* from Hasselblad

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# Lamps

![:scale 75%](img/lamp.jpg)

???

* Don't need to replace these... yet

* Have read that they will likely need replacing at some point

* 25 Euros for 2

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# Success?

* Scanner: 1,750.- CHF
* Power Supply: 175.- CHF
* Belts: 25.- CHF
* Film Holders: 350.- CHF
* Lamps: 25.- CHF

* Total: 2,325.- CHF (c. 2,500 EUR)

???

Total costs

* Have already scanned > 100 frames of film

* Saved 2,500.- CHF there already
 * Effectively broken even
 * Have probably several hundred frames more to scan

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# The Bigger Issue(s)?

![:scale 45%](img/mac.jpeg)

???

* Power Mac G4 (1999 - 2004)

* This thing is almost certainly living on borrowed time

* I'll maybe pickup a backup soon

* The key thing is though, this very expensive, very hi quality scanner, will at some point be rendered useless by the upgrade treadmill

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# The Upgrade Treadmill

![:scale 85%](img/do_not_upgrade.jpg)

???

This is from the top of the Seattle Space Needle

Clearly that notice speaks of someone being bitten by an upgrade at some point

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# The Upgrade Treadmill

???

Is anyone else feeling the fatigue?

* Security updates, sure

* But feature creep and trivialities? No!

???

+++

What tangiable benefits have the last ten, fifteen, or even twenty years of OS updates brought?

Other than security, and compatibility with newer hardware?

And, by association, forced deprecation of older hardware

* Getting faster and steeper

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# Subscription Lock In / Dead Endpoints

- I couldn't vacuum my house because an SSL cert had expired

![:scale 100%](img/gopro_quick.png)

???

GoPro is announcing the end of life of the GoPro Quik app for macOS, effective at the end of 2024

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# Subscription Lock In / Dead Endpoints

![:scale 25%](img/quik.PNG)

???

They discontinued the former in favour of this

Which requires an account, login, subscription, and so on.

I just want to transfer the videos from the hardware, I don't need any of this crap

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# Software in Everything?

- The flextight could just have an embedded Raspberry PI?

- Just a keyboard and mouse input, monitor and USB output
 - Reduce the surface area
 - Reduce the connectivity issues
 - Reduce the software dependency

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# Software is Never Done?

- Because: externalities

- I guess software is "done" when it's no longer supported?

- https://www.marcia.no/words/eol
 - "When hardware products reach end-of-life (EOL), companies should be forced to open-source the software."

???

I suspect Hasselblad/Imacon never open-sourced the software due to licensing issues

Or they just lost the source

Or they just don't care, I don't know

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# Discontinued Hardware

- Or, that is to say, discontinued parts?

- Regulation changes?

???

+++

The panoramics I shoot are with a camera that was discontinued in 2004

Because EU regulation banned lead solder in circuit boards

The company decided redesigning the parts wasn't worth it.

- Old hardware has new exciting ways to fail

???

+++

As time goes on components will fail or loosen

Components that were expected to last decades

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# Tribal knowledge

- Link rot

- QR code rot

???

A lot of this stuff is hidden in walled gardens

There's a Facebook Imacon group, for example

- Misleading AI

![:scale 75%](img/chat_gpt.png)

???

+++

"My flextight scans are coming out stretched, what might the problem be?"

LLM's have gobbled up all the right information, and all the wrong information

Or information that is massively out of date

Nowhere in the suggestions here does it mention the belts might need replacing

Which, according to my *own* research, is the most common reason these days

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# Legacy Software

![:scale 66%](img/asil.png)

![:scale 66%](img/asil_hn.png)

???

This is an essay I wrote a decade ago, which also hit the front page of HN

I think most of it is still relevant today

Nicholas always said "legacy software is the ugly stuff that makes you money"

Which I think is true

But now it's the stuff that surrounds us, like:

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# Legacy Software

![:scale 90%](img/cash.jpg)

???

* When I want to withdraw cash (not pictured: the half dozen apps on my phone to do banking)

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# Legacy Software

![:scale 90%](img/train.jpg)

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* Get a train (not pictured: the half dozen apps on my phone to handle tickets)

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# Legacy Software

![:scale 90%](img/bike.jpg)

???

* Ride a bike (not pictured: the half dozen apps...)

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# Legacy Software

![:scale 90%](img/self_checkout.jpg)

???

* Buy stuff from a shop

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# Questions / Comments?

References:

* [Imacon Users Group](https://groups.io/g/ImaconUsers/topics)
* [The state of Hasselblad Flextight scanners (2019)](https://www.davidebarranca.com/2019/12/2019-12-07/2019-12-07-hasselblad-flextight-flexcolor-3f/)
* [1951 USAF resolution test chart](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1951_USAF_resolution_test_chart)
 * [Vlads Test Target](https://www.film4ever.info/vtt)

* [Printer Story](https://leejo.github.io/2023/01/23/printer/)

* [Original Scanner Blog](https://leejo.github.io/2023/01/25/scanner/)
 * [Responses to HN](https://leejo.github.io/2023/01/28/scanner_response/)
 * [Camera Scanning](https://leejo.github.io/2023/07/22/scanner_not_scanner/)

* [All Software is Legacy](https://leejo.github.io/2016/02/22/all_software_is_legacy/)

* [Repair Cafe](https://www.repaircafe.org/en/about/)

???

I'm not lamenting the situation, I'm just saying this is the way it is