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Editor’s be aware: That is the primary a part of a two-part Movie Friday sequence.
Markus Hofstätter is understood for creating elaborate massive format cameras and contraptions, however certainly one of his most up-to-date initiatives goes above and past something we’ve seen earlier than. For this undertaking, Hofstätter introduced again to life a 73kg (160lb) ultra-large format flatbed scanner so he can higher scan all however the largest of images he captures on his array of enormous format cameras.
Whereas the undertaking itself took three months to finish, the journey began years in the past. Hofstätter had been wanting a way to scan his large moist plates, however might by no means wrangle up a scanner that may get the job accomplished. That each one modified although when a buddy of his notified him a few Display screen Cézanne EFT-S5500 scanner that was up on the market.
This ultra-large scanner weighs roughly as a lot as a full-grown human and is so massive that it barely match within the rear of his SUV when he picked it up and simply managed to squeeze by his entrance door when he introduced it inside. And the logistics had been simply the beginning of the highway forward.
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The scanner, which may scan 32-bit CMYK, 48-bit RGB and 8-bit grayscale photos at as much as 5300dpi on its 53cm x 34 cm (13.4″ x 20.9″) mattress, makes use of a SCSI II interface and software program under no circumstances designed to run on trendy computer systems. Whereas it did include a retro Energy Mac (433Mhz) that may’ve considerably labored out of the field, Hofstätter decided the velocity at which he’d be capable of switch these photos from the scanner to the Energy Mac and to a different laptop would’ve taken far too lengthy. So, he ‘upgraded’ to a Energy Mac G4 Quicksilver with a twin 1.2Ghz CPU and 2GB of RAM and bought an array of outdated parts—some new within the unique field—that may velocity up the method whereas additionally being appropriate with the scanner.
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From there, it took some tinkering to get the Energy Mac G4 Quicksilver up and working, as MacOS 9 wouldn’t run on the pc, however Mac OS X wouldn’t help the SCSi controller wanted to attach the scanner. Ultimately, Hofstätter managed to discover a workaround that allowed him to run Mac OS9 by way of a intelligent multi-boot setup and switch scans over Ethernet at about 60MB/s, roughly 60x the velocity of the USB 1.1 connection that was required for the unique Energy Mac (433Mhz) that got here with the scanner.
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With that set in place, alongside an unique Cinema Show, Hofstätter was prepared to start out scanning.
You possibly can see the outcomes on Hofstätter’s weblog put up overlaying the complete course of, however we’ll be saving the outcomes for half two, which might be featured on Movie Friday subsequent week.
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