After doing some web searches for microfiche scanners, and realizing that new ones cost what I make in a *season,*it dawned on me yesterday that I had an old fiche viewer in deep storage in my shop. After a fair bit of cleaning, I found that it still worked… and with the aid of my Nikon D5000 digital camera, I’m able to obtain some fair images from it. Below are the original photos and the cleaned-up versions. I suspect a bit more cleaning, and some photography at night when there are no other light sources to cause reflections and such, will aid image quality noticeably. Given how much better these images are than the earlier ones done via the slide adapter on my flatbed scanner, it’s already a major improvement.
The viewer:
The original photos:
The tinkered-with results:
3 Responses to “Fiche Improvement Program”
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That will be big , think of all the info on fiche. I’ll ask Michelle if she has any on the X-15. Does fiche work for photos as well? I thoght it did. I’d think that you’d be able to rig up a mount to your camera that would bypass the projector assembly, then you could set it up to record a movie as you scan the fiche at a fast speed then slow the movie playback and see whats there or would it be possible to shoot the entire fiche at once to get an index?
> That will be big , think of all the info on fiche.
Irritatingly hugenormous, in fact. I wored on the same cutaway shuttle drawing I’ve been posting; took me more than an hour to stitch it together from about a dozen separate photos. There are numerous sources of error here, startign with the fact that the viewer does not dispaly a perfectly ‘flat” image… there are spherical aberations and such, so none of the images actually line up. Still, with some stitching software and a fair deal of effort, the end result ain’t half bad.
> Does fiche work for photos as well?
Umm.. huh?
> you’d be able to rig up a mount to your camera that would bypass the projector assembly
In theory, yes… remove the lens from the camera, bypass the mirrors and project the image directly from the viewers small lens assembly directly onto the camera’s CCD. But it’s a great deal of effort for minimal perceivable benefit.
[…] made from fiberglass, and would be made to accept microfiche, microfilm and regular film, something I struggled with earlier iterations of slide scanners with no success. I imagine that several versions of more or […]