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I've often hesitated about getting a microfilm or microfiche reader, but what would really get me over the edge is some kind of similar equipment to make microf

I've often hesitated about getting a microfilm or microfiche reader, but what would really get me over the edge is some kind of similar equipment to make microfilm or microfiche to use with the reader. Did such "consumer" equipment ever exist, or did all the libraries and institutions buy premade microfiche or microfilm, with the exception of a few dedicated conversion companies? Are there any combined devices/stations that can be used to both read AND create either microfilm or microfiche?

stan_rogers 8y ago
Everything one needed was available; it just wasn't practical in the "consumer goods" sense. You needed an apochromatic flat-field lens, generally optimized specifically for the magnification levels involved (since sufficient optimization over a very wide range of focal distances is an extremely difficult thing). The film has to be extremely low sensitivity to have good enough acutance (think ISO 6-12 as "high speed", since the emulsion needs to be extremely thin). You need consistent lighting so you can have a decent idea of what your exposure will be like, and before Polaroid polarization film cropped up, keeping glare under control was a bit of a bugger. You needed a rock-solid setup, since your exposure was going to take a while. The film needed to be kept very flat - there's far less room for any deviation than there would be for taking general photographs of the big world. In a world of silicon wafers, it's hard to remember that keeping pieces of floppy (and often tightly-rolled) plastic flat enough was once one of the hard parts. Processing was pretty critical - a little too long in the soup, and the black bleeds (that's how halftones are created using a line screen). So, you could get it all going with a decent copy stand and lights, the right (expensive) camera and lens and a goodly amount of faff... or you could get a service that had a dedicated process camera that paid for itself through constant usage and craftspeople who do that sort of thing for a living do it for you for a smallish fee. If you had regular archiving needs, the cost of the set-up wasn't horrible - it was certainly cheaper than a process camera for printing plates. It just wasn't a home-and-small-office thing by any normal standards. Most of it, though, you could do now with an "eBay special" camera and lens and a bit of ortho-litho film. It's still available as sheet film. That would mean red reads as black and non-repro blue is a thing. Panchromatic repro work would be a lot harder since Kodak killed off Technical Pan. Tech Pan was kind of super-fast film, though - you'd use it at "ISO" 20-50, depending on the application - so while it was spectacular for general photography, it was just at the edge of what would be useful for microfiche.
VLM 8y ago
Used Kodak archive writers cost about $30K (not a typo) are quite large, the modular cassettes for film cost about $1K each, film reloads for each cassette cost about $10 each, a roll of film holds like "ten thousand" images, and the machine can burn an image in about one second. All varying by factors of perhaps four depending on individual model. They eat PDF and TIFF (fax) files, also others. Fundamentally its "just a printer". Theoretically a completely hands-off lights-out machine, much like theoretically a laser printer never needs hand-holding... of course laser printers are mfgr'd "fire and forget" whereas the kodak archive writers service contract was something like $5K/yr. Part of the problem is the target market; this was at a financial services company where the supplier knew they could charge pretty much anything they wanted and it would get passed along as a tiny fraction of the end user customer contract cost. If a $100M financial services contract involves a $5K service contract for some obscure accounting thingy no one really cares. Given that situation is similar to pre-consumer era 3-d printing, I figure a really smart hacker who doesn't care about reproducible results or speed or reliability could squirt something out for a tenth the costs; but even at a tenth, thats still going to be "laser cutter" like costs. Film is never cheap; high res film is gonna be worse, just how it is.
yourapostasy 8y ago
I would settle for an ultraportable USB-attached reader device that scanned microfilm/microfiche, with a draft mode that lets me preview a low resolution real-time display via the USB on an app on the laptop to position the film/fiche, and a high resolution mode for scanning into the app. I can understand the film/fiche writing machines being hideously expensive, but I have yet to find a reader that is built for the XXI century digital-oriented demographic. Of the readers built recently, they're all expensive, and are designed with firmware, instead of a design orientation of dumb manipulable hardware (preferably with open documentation) driven by modifiable software.

stan_rogers 8y ago

Everything one needed was available; it just wasn't practical in the "consumer goods" sense. You needed an apochromatic flat-field lens, generally optimized specifically for the magnification levels involved (since sufficient optimization over a very wide range of focal distances is an extremely difficult thing). The film has to be extremely low sensitivity to have good enough acutance (think ISO 6-12 as "high speed", since the emulsion needs to be extremely thin). You need consistent lighting so you can have a decent idea of what your exposure will be like, and before Polaroid polarization film cropped up, keeping glare under control was a bit of a bugger. You needed a rock-solid setup, since your exposure was going to take a while. The film needed to be kept very flat - there's far less room for any deviation than there would be for taking general photographs of the big world. In a world of silicon wafers, it's hard to remember that keeping pieces of floppy (and often tightly-rolled) plastic flat enough was once one of the hard parts. Processing was pretty critical - a little too long in the soup, and the black bleeds (that's how halftones are created using a line screen). So, you could get it all going with a decent copy stand and lights, the right (expensive) camera and lens and a goodly amount of faff... or you could get a service that had a dedicated process camera that paid for itself through constant usage and craftspeople who do that sort of thing for a living do it for you for a smallish fee. If you had regular archiving needs, the cost of the set-up wasn't horrible - it was certainly cheaper than a process camera for printing plates. It just wasn't a home-and-small-office thing by any normal standards. Most of it, though, you could do now with an "eBay special" camera and lens and a bit of ortho-litho film. It's still available as sheet film. That would mean red reads as black and non-repro blue is a thing. Panchromatic repro work would be a lot harder since Kodak killed off Technical Pan. Tech Pan was kind of super-fast film, though - you'd use it at "ISO" 20-50, depending on the application - so while it was spectacular for general photography, it was just at the edge of what would be useful for microfiche.

VLM 8y ago

Used Kodak archive writers cost about $30K (not a typo) are quite large, the modular cassettes for film cost about $1K each, film reloads for each cassette cost about $10 each, a roll of film holds like "ten thousand" images, and the machine can burn an image in about one second. All varying by factors of perhaps four depending on individual model. They eat PDF and TIFF (fax) files, also others. Fundamentally its "just a printer". Theoretically a completely hands-off lights-out machine, much like theoretically a laser printer never needs hand-holding... of course laser printers are mfgr'd "fire and forget" whereas the kodak archive writers service contract was something like $5K/yr. Part of the problem is the target market; this was at a financial services company where the supplier knew they could charge pretty much anything they wanted and it would get passed along as a tiny fraction of the end user customer contract cost. If a $100M financial services contract involves a $5K service contract for some obscure accounting thingy no one really cares. Given that situation is similar to pre-consumer era 3-d printing, I figure a really smart hacker who doesn't care about reproducible results or speed or reliability could squirt something out for a tenth the costs; but even at a tenth, thats still going to be "laser cutter" like costs. Film is never cheap; high res film is gonna be worse, just how it is.

yourapostasy 8y ago

I would settle for an ultraportable USB-attached reader device that scanned microfilm/microfiche, with a draft mode that lets me preview a low resolution real-time display via the USB on an app on the laptop to position the film/fiche, and a high resolution mode for scanning into the app. I can understand the film/fiche writing machines being hideously expensive, but I have yet to find a reader that is built for the XXI century digital-oriented demographic. Of the readers built recently, they're all expensive, and are designed with firmware, instead of a design orientation of dumb manipulable hardware (preferably with open documentation) driven by modifiable software.