Thats really Cool! Thanks for letting me know, this might be the impetus I needed to go back to working on the 220 camera!

Hi!

I’ve only ever managed to get the lide30 to play nice. I have destroyed one 110 and two 220-scanners in my efforts to build a more versatile rig.

What happens if you drop the prism back in?

I’ve also speculated about there being som calibration and automatic gain control going on in these newer models. I believe it could be used to normalize the values coming off of the individual sensor segments.

On my latest attempt at a 220 scanner, I actually built a small dimmable LED circuit that I attached externally to try and influence the calibration I thought was happening, but there was a disappointing lack of results. Come to think of it, I still have that rig laying around somewhere, and the experiment may have been flawed, I’ll have a look next time I’m at my workshop. I’ll let you know what I find.

I know that rig is at least functional, as objects placed directly onto the glass renders crude shadows on the scans.

That’s the long answer, the short answer is no, I don’t have any tips, maybe aside from working on fooling the possible calibration somehow.

As far as I understand, BankID actually abstracts away those numbers. FB have to use an API, and more or less receive a true or false on their query.

They recently opened up for using BankID to prove your age at bars and such, and I think they only get to know if person is old enough or not. Not even a number, just old enough.

That’s really nice

I case you’re really wondering, the model has two legs, maybe three, the liquid effect is due to the very slow rolling shutter of the scanner, and how it draws motion.

And why is there a face just floating in mid-air?

For sure!

I opened up an old Canon flatbed scanner and more or less removed anything that wasn’t the sensor or the mechanical assembly pulling it along. The optical assembly is hacked together with black foam board, an acrylic magnifying glass and too much gaffers tape.

Think of it as a pinhole shoebox camera with a scanner at the back, instead of photo paper or film.

A really good boy, and that’s what matters, thanks for the BTS shot.

Yes, aside from global contrast adjustments, there’s a circular level and local contrast adjustment on the dancer, to make her stand out a little bit more

I love this! The dismissive arrogance is wonderful.

Addiction is an example, the thing that makes you feel good in the short term, is the same thing that mess you up in the long term, and the only thing that makes the thing bearable is more of the thing, completing a fucking horrible cycle.

Fair enough, a bunch of but holes in that one. I’ve been brushing up on the classics lately while waiting

*Amazing

Gorgeous, astrophotography is like black magic to me, I’m really grateful there’s people like you out there giving us these kinds of images.

What you are describing is known as a harris shutter, which would be awesome to explore, especially considering the weird way motion is captured on one of these devices.

I don’t think a separate brightness channel is entirely necessary. But if you want to go down that path, I’d start trying out the blending modes in photoshop. There’s probably also some method for taking your RGB composite, and bring it into a colorspace that has a separate channel for brightness, and then replace that channel with your b/w pass. Lab color space should allow you to do this, although I’m not really sure what software to use, or if theres some way of doing This directly in Photoshop.

Thank you!

The n650u looks very similar to the lide 30, so I’ll assume that it’s more or less the same inside.

The sensor assembly is fairly straightforward. A plastic housing that gets pulled by a cord. Once you liberate the assembly from its track/cord/whatever is holding it and moving it around, you get to the good part.

The sensor itself, and the RGB LED that supplies the light is on a PCB that’s mounted to the plastic carriage from the underside, it’s held together by plastic tabs (it’s a few years since I did this, so the details might be off, but it wasn’t a difficult task). Use a sharp utility knife to cut the tabs and remove the sensor PCB. I’ve used strips of gaffers tape to put it all together again. The LED looks like a small white rectangle stood perpendicuar to the PCB, I simply broke it off. This makes the canon drivers throw an error, but VueScan doesn’t care. If you’re squeamish about actively destroying your scanner, you can probably figure out a way to cover it up with some tape or foil.

The circular vignetting you’re seeing is due to the pinhole array, it’s a thin black plastic strip with a bunch of tiny holes set in front of a slit, just rip it off, its either glued or welded in place, but I’ve never had a problem getting it out with some pliers. While you’re messing about in that area, get rid of the prism that spreads the light from LED as well, it probably won’t do much of anything if left in, but it feels better to remove it.

Once you run the camera in this state, you will discover that you get uneven exposure from edge to edge, a linear vignette perpendicular to the axis which the sensor moves. This happens because the plastic housing of the sensor is throwing shade. So use any available abrasive machine, and cut that housing down to its essential functions of holding the sensor in its place, and as a pressure against the glass plate.

Unfortunately I don’t have any large format lenses around, so I’ve stuck a magnifying glass to the front of my camera (you know, gotta keep it punk rock), but the way I handle aperture is by cutting holes into black cardboard (very thin cardboard) at about the size I think will work, and taping the hole across the lens. One of my goals with this project is to try make photography into a tactile, direct and intuitive process so I try to avoid unnecessary machinery.

The reason you’re only getting grayscale is due to how a CIS scanner renders color. During a normal scan, the RGB LED only flashes one channel at a time, and the driver figures out if it’s looking at the red, green or blue signal all by itself, and at the end it interpolates the data to render a full color image file for you to enjoy. I’ve been playing around with the idea of tapping the signal path and use it to trigger an external RGB lighting rig in a studio, to get full color images of models. But so far it’s only a funny thought!

And lastly, the sensor is exceptionally sensitive to infrared light, to the point that the heat from the internal electronics of the scanner causes streaking. I’m using a few pieces of carefully placed aluminum foil to shield the sensor in select areas, and that reduces the issue to a tolerable amount.

Good luck on your build! This project has given me a boatload of insights into both photography, electronics and computing, and I hope you will have a similarly awesome journey.

Edit: im happy to answer any further questions you might have. it would be awesome to see some shots once you get the contraption up and running!

For sure.

It’s a canon Lide 30 scanner at its core. You have to remove the light source (a tiny RGB LED) and a pinhole array from the front of the sensor. Then I used a dremel to widen the slit the sensor looks through, to deal with some pretty severe vignetting. The optical assembly is made from foam board, gaffers tape and an acrylic lens liberated from a regular magnifying glass. I use a software called VueScan to perform the actual scan.