Experiments

I promised I'd share some of my digital experiments--my new digital montages/collages aren't done, but I want to show you what a scanner can do!

Flatbed scanners come in two types. If you have a scanner with a CCD photo cell, then you can use your scanner as a camera to take very detailed, well-lit pictures of three dimensional object up to an inch or two in depth! If you're like me and you don't have your scanner instruction booklet handy, you can just experiment like I did. One of my two scanners works, one doesn't.

I laid a bunch of seashells down on the scanner glass, left the lid open, and scanned at 600 dpi. All the scans came out with a nice black background since the scanner light didn't shine all the way to my ceiling. There's no need to put the scanner lid down.

The smaller of the two pictures is the original scan, reduced quite a bit detail so that I could post it here. The one with the blue background is my cleaned up, masked version. I also down-sized this one--the original is incredibly high quality!

What will I use these for? I'll use them in a photomontage, someday, probably. I've been scanning all the 3d objects I can think of, including some ceramic Easter bunnies, some small carved wooden animals, vegetables, dolls, and rusty nails/washers/etc. I found one site where they catch dragonflies, refrigerate them so they don't move, scan them, and then let them go after they've warmed to room temperature!

Some galleries:
Photovinc
Photographical.net

and some articles:
Photogalaxy
Carl McMillan
X-bit Labs