Practice question · Match the pairs
Match each scanning route to what characterises it.
- Drum scanner
- Dedicated film scanner
- Flatbed with a transparency unit
- Camera scanning on a copy stand
- A digital camera and macro lens photographing the negative on a light panel
- Photomultiplier tubes, the longest density range, wet mounting
- Any format up to the platen size, at lower effective resolution
- A fixed carrier and optics designed for one format only
Hints
- One route uses no scanner at all.
- One is limited to a single film format and optimised for it.
Show the answer
- Drum scanner → Photomultiplier tubes, the longest density range, wet mounting
- Dedicated film scanner → A fixed carrier and optics designed for one format only
- Flatbed with a transparency unit → Any format up to the platen size, at lower effective resolution
- Camera scanning on a copy stand → A digital camera and macro lens photographing the negative on a light panel
Why
Camera scanning is the newest and now the most common: a modern sensor out-resolves most consumer film scanners, and the whole frame is captured in one exposure rather than swept line by line. Its weakness is flatness of the film and evenness of the light, which is exactly what a scanner's carrier was for.
Practise The Darkroom, Digital and Hybrid Workflows
The app has 6 more questions on this lesson, and keeps your place in the course. Photography I is free to start.
More questions on The Darkroom, Digital and Hybrid Workflows
- A digital negative printed on inkjet transparency film can be contact-printed onto silver-gelatin or…
- Complete the account of scanning and hybrid work.
- Why can two scans of the same negative produce prints that separate the shadows quite differently? Select…
- Arrange the stages of a hybrid workflow ending in a contact print in order.
- A black-and-white negative runs to about 1.35 in density above base plus fog. How many stops of density range…
- A drum scanner and a good flatbed differ only in speed, not in the density range they can record.
- A darkroom print offers only approximate repeatability, whereas an inkjet print from a scan is exact. What…