[Simh] best way to scan 172 column fanfold 80s printout?

Sun Feb 11 18:02:11 EST 2018

*"so I guess question 1: how best to get rid of the folds? my method so
far: fold them the other direction and try and fold it out, but so far not
much luck"*

If you have a big wad of paper that has been folded in half newspaper
style, fold it the other way a few times. Then place it concave side down
on a flat surface, put a board on top of it, and weigh it down with some
books. (Book binders wrap bricks in paper for this purpose.) Leave it for a
few weeks or even months, the longer the better. You should end up with a
listing that is flat enough to work with even if it isn't perfect. If each
page is individually folded into a hard crease, then you'll just have to
deal with the unwanted line yourself (see Photoshop/GIMP tips below).

*"and 2: how best to scan 100s of wide fanfold printout pages?"*

Scanners are very slow. A camera is *much* faster.

Buy a second hand DSLR with "kit lens" from eBay or Craig's List. A ten
year old Canon 350D/Rebel is more than capable, resolution wise. Nikon and
others are just as good. Put it on a sturdy tripod, preferably with a
tiltable or repositionable centre column. (If you enquire at your nearest
camera club, someone may even be willing to help you. A good tripod can
cost a lot of money, so borrow one if you can.) A cable release suitable
for your camera model will also be a big help and costs next to nothing on
eBay.

You don't need a full frame camera (expensive), a "crop sensor" works fine.
Also, don't use a point and shoot digicam, because these tend to have tiny
sensors that need a larger subject distance if you want to avoid
distortion. A cheap DSLR is fine.

Place the listings on the floor, showing two consecutive sheets, with the
stack evenly distributed so have have approximately equal number of folds
top and bottom. The camera, of course, faces down from above. Use a couple
of desk lamps or mirrors to light the subject from a 45 degree angle. If
you end up with harsh light dark areas, try diffusing the light with some
tracing paper or chiffon. If you are in a well lit room with light coming
from all directions then you may not even have to mess with extra lights or
mirrors.

Place some masking tape (blue painters' tape) around your fanfold to help
keep things in the same place. With a bit of tripod and camera adjustment
you should be able to get a full two sheets in your viewfinder, along with
the masking tape, and enough of a margin to help with alignment. Adjust the
camera on the tripod head so the image comes out as close as possible to
being a rectangle. The blue masking tape will help you with this.

Camera settings:

   - Zoom your lens to around 50mm. For example, if you have an 18-55mm kit
   lens, use 55mm. That gives you the least distortion. Avoid the "wide" end
   of the lens (e.g. 18mm) because that's where you tend to get more
   "pincusion" or "barrel" distortion.
   - Set your image quality to Large/Fine JPEG.
   - Put the camera into aperture priority (Av on Canon).
   - Set the aperture to one or two stops from the lowest number. For
   example, if you are using an 18-55mm, the lowest number (largest aperture)
   is typically something like 3.5 or 4, so the best setting will be something
   like 5.6 or 8. This will get you the best sharpness for your lens. Depth
   of field should be fine if your listings are flat enough and you are not
   using high magnification or extreme telephoto (which you aren't).
   - The camera takes care of the shutter speed.
   - If the shutter speed ends up being longer than 1/60th second, then you
   can increase the ISO value (camera sensitivity) to 400 or so to get faster
   shutter action and less risk of camera shake.
   - Use manual focus. Most lenses have a little lever on the side to
   switch between AF/MF.

Then it's a matter of focusing and pressing the shutter release. Turn a
page, press the shutter, turn a page, press the shutter. Every couple of
shots, redistribute your fanfold so you have approximately equal folds top
and bottom. For example, every time you move five folds from top to bottom,
also move five folds from the bottom half back to the top. That keeps the
stack relatively level and the edges nice and parallel. While you're at it,
re-check the focus every time you redistribute your fanfold.

Keep doing this until you get back to the start of your listing. You will
very quickly get into a certain rhythm turning pages and firing the
shutter. Before you know it, you will have gotten through 100s of pages. If
you have someone around who can help check the focus and press the shutter
while you turn the pages, that obviously helps to speed things up further.

When you have photographed all your listings, go outside and start to enjoy
your new photography hobby.

To convert your colour photographs to black and white text only images, the
following Photoshop or GIMP concepts are worth learning to use:

   - Levels. This is a trio of black, white and neutral sliders that can
   often make your background disappear almost by magic. You'll also use this
   in ordinary digital photography to bring out detail in your shadow areas.
   - Channels. If your paper has green or blue bars, then you can
   selectively remove those colours to make the bars disappear, hopefully with
   very little damage to your text.
   - If you have an ugly black line down the middle of each page (i.e. your
   pages were folded sharply in half), then you can quite easily cut and paste
   one half of your image to shift it a few pixels to the left or right. That
   will inevitably distort a letter or two, but OCR software is pretty good at
   dealing with the odd imperfection.

OCR software often does all this automatically. Apparently, code tends to
scan really well if you tell your software not to use a dictionary. (I've
only used SimpleOCR myself, and that only with English text.)

Hope this helps,
David.

On 11 February 2018 at 16:09, Zane Healy <healyzh at avanthar.com> wrote:

> On Feb 11, 2018, at 6:55 AM, Dan Gahlinger <dgahling at hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> I have several printouts like this,
> the one I was just trying to scan in is labelled "EMPIRE Version 4.0
> 18-Jan-81"
> with the notice: "Please send bug reports to ELROND::EMPIRE"
> This is a Vax/VMS Fortran conversion from TOPS-10/20 from sources from
> around fall 1979
> It seems I only have the first 95 pages of this printout
> and it's folded width-wise, making scanning more difficult, old folds are
> hard to get out.
>
> I also have Zork (Vax/VMS) and of course several different iterations of
> Trek7 (Vms)
> somewhere I have a copy of Adventure (Colossal Cave) and the "Castle" game
> I love so much.
>
> so I guess question 1: how best to get rid of the folds? my method so far:
> fold them the other direction and try and fold it out, but so far not much
> luck
> and 2: how best to scan 100s of wide fanfold printout pages?
>
> I wish someone in Toronto had converted an old teletype and put a camera
> on it, that would be brilliant!
>
> Dan.
>
>
> The best way might be a piece of glass (to keep the paper flat), a copy
> stand, and a high-MP DSLR.  Lighting in that situation would be…
> interesting.  I’m not sure how much a polarizer on the lens would help.
> One option might be to put it on a light table, but I think that would
> create an interesting/unreadable mess.  Actually less light might be
> better, and simply go with longer exposures.
>
> There are graphic arts scanners that will do large pages, but in the art
> reproduction world, the method above (normally minus the glass), is more
> normal.  You’re lucky, you’re looking to copy something that doesn’t need
> to be 1200dpi or better.  I know you can get up to at least 12x18 range
> with a scanner.  I’m currently looking for either one of these, or ideally
> a drum scanner capable of handling 11x14 negatives.  Right now the only way
> I have to get a digital copy of photo’s taken with my 11x14 camera, is to
> photograph the prints.
>
> Zane
>
>
>
>
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