Fiche scanning

[Jim Battle]

Al Kossow wrote:
...
> Yes, there are step and repeat scanners made by companies like Canon
> and Mekel. They are expensive. I have a first generation model Mekel
> that I paid over 10 thousand dollars for (which is a fraction of its
> new price). DEC used very small frames which require a lot of fiddling
> to get the parameters set correctly. Scanning services exist, but the
> test scans I got from them were not well aligned.

This might be way off base since I don't know the particulars, but is it 
not possible to overscan each page and then crop after it is in digital 
form?  Why spend a long time fiddling trying to center and align each 
page optically?

Also, I'd be willing to kick into a fund to hire a kid to sit and do the 
fiddly stuff, and I bet others would too.  There is no reason for you to 
spend your time doing monkey work, Al.  Sitting around listening to 
music doing a non-taxing work for $10/hr would be a dream job, it seems, 
for a typical 14 year old.