WHEN MY WIFE wanted to start working with digital images, I set off in search of the perfect machine to meet her needs. If you think I headed straight for the digital-camera display at the nearest electronic shop you would be wrong; I bought her a flatbed scanner. Why, you might ask, when you can buy a digital camera from which images can be sent across the world at the touch of a button, did I buy something so seemingly obselete as a scanner?
There are two reasons. Most important, it is worth remembering that while digital cameras are brilliant tools for comm-unicating images instantly, if you want to spend a nostalgic moment remembering an event that occurred 10 years ago, nothing can beat a photographic print. Don't get me wrong, I shoot quite a few photos in our studio and 99 per cent are shot on a digital camera. It has reduced the turnaround time for a photo from hours to minutes. But I still find making a print for my portfolio is a bit of a challenge. And for my wife, what's to become of digital images shot on a vacation or outing? The idea of sitting down in front of a computer to look at old pictures doesn't quite have the appeal of sitting down on the sofa with a photo album. Sure, you can make prints from your digital image in an inkjet printer, but it is expensive, the prints lack quality and fade quickly, and the whole process is laborious and time-consuming.
Before you write off the future of scanners it is also worth remembering they are versatile machines. A scanner can perform tasks such as optical-character recognition (OCR). OCR software reads a scanned page of text and then transfers the text into a word-processor document. Most OCR software is pretty accurate, although the accuracy depends on the quality of the original. It is certainly far more efficient than trying to send an image of a page of type-written text.
A scanner can also be used as a photocopier if used with an inkjet printer. And buying a scanner is far easier than it was a few years ago. The number of companies in this market has dwindled - there's little available beyond HP, Epson and Canon models these days - but you don't need to worry too much about the manufacturer you choose. The one I bought for my wife was not the most expensive model on the market, but despite having tested nearly every scanner available in Hong Kong from 1995 to 2000, I'm yet to see a machine that produces better scan quality. In fact, a scanner priced less than $1,000 will produce the same scan quality as a machine that cost $30,000 five years ago. My only hesitation concerns some of the ultra-thin models. These units use a different type of image sensor called a CMOS chip, which has a reputation for producing noticeably more noise on the image than a CCD.