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Comment by fmajid | Hacker News Reader

The Imacon Flextight has been discontinued for a while now. Flatbed scannners are stagnant because there isn't enough demand to drive investment. Sheet-fed document scanners are still lively, but quality has gone down, my 2010 vintage ScanSnap S1500M has a high-quality CCD sensor, but newer models are almost invariably CIS with much lower color fidelity for scanning artwork.

High-quality XY prepress scanners like the Cézanne you mention, or prepress leaders like Fuji Lanovia, Creo-Scitex are also discontinued since the industry's gone fully digital and doesn't expect to scan medium-format slides any more.

No wonder Gen-Z finds scanners exotic and terrifying:

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/feb/27/gen-z-tec...

The only actively produced scanner that can outperform the V600 is Epson's V850.

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What a coincidence, I pulled out my S1500M (vintage 2010-10) to do some scanning a few weeks ago (after several years) and found the rubber rollers had melted and become like superglue. Currently reading about how I might try to do an ad-hoc fix, because forums say disassembly and reassembly is very finicky indeed. Now that I learn it's CCD I am more motivated to repair.

The roller kit is a field-replaceable unit and Fujitsu supplies them in a boxed kit, so it can't be that hard (I'm still on my original roller, even though I bout a roller replacemnt kit, so I have no idea how hard it is).

It's a great unit, but official software support lapsed a few years ago so I am now using it with third-party software (ExactScan Pro).

Here are a few scanners I ran through a comparative color fidelity test a while ago, I was surprised how good it is for scanning artwork when it was designed for documents:

https://blog.majid.info/scanner-group-test/

Fair enough - personally, I'd use a digital camera to scan large things anyway, possibly using an XY gantry if needed. Use a monochrome sensor + color filter wheel for extra points.

Scanners terrify generations equally in my opinion ;)

I've owned flatbeds since the original SCSI CanoScan 300 in 1994 (couldn't afford the 600dpi CanoScan 600 then), so I'm jaded. The digital camera option works, but only if you have a high-CRI light source, a proper macro lens and a good copy stand. The Fujitsu SV600 is an excellent option as well.

Museums actually used scanning large-format backs like the Better Light Dicomed, a flatbed scanner-like back that slots into a 4x5" large-format camera, so the camera is also a scanner...

Still? I would have thought by now they would have switched to something like a Phase One IXH - https://heritage-digitaltransitions.com/dt-ixh-150mp-cultura...

I have a broken betterlight I got just to put on my shelf haha. Scan backs are neat!

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