Microfilm scanning - film scanners?

[jim stephens]

Philip Pemberton wrote:

>
>   I could (in theory at least) bodge up a cardboard carrier for my 
> flatbed scanner (an Epson Perfection 2400 Photo) and use that, but I 
> don't rate its optical quality for transparency film very highly.

I used a Perfection scanner to scan a fiche.  Microfilm should be even 
easier, assuming
you mean the 16mm format with images that fill that frame.  The images I 
scanned with
the epson were about 1/8" on a side, or maybe 1/3 the size of the 16mm 
frame size for
an 8 1/2" x 11" image on a 16mm microfilm roll.

The biggest problem with the epson would be how to feed the frame thru 
the scanner.
If you had some moviola reels you could mount them on either side of the 
unit and
spool to an empty reel on the other side, I suppose.

I used settings to produce a g4 compressed tiff with the same bit 
resolution as
a 400 dpi scan of 8 1/2 x 11 would produce with my epson and it worked okay,
though I had to manuall position a scan box over each image on the 
microfiche
sheet, and scan.

Jim