To all those scanning shells with flatbed scanners...

Olivier has covered some of the info needed when
creating images for the web, but a flatbed scanner
is really only designed for... well, flat stuff.

Clams work well, as do chitons and the apertures
of cowries, conchs and several other things.

If you are bent on putting up images of pointy,
three dimensional specimens, you really need a
camera. There are lots of fine digital cameras now
and you can even use (as I do) a video-tape camera
to feed live video into a digitizing adapter. (For
me, it's a Snappy.)

I know this was mentioned before but bear in mind the
geometry involved with getting too close to the subject.
Distortion will occur; the front spines or parts of the
shell appear disproportionately large because their
distance to the lens is considerably less than
the distance from the farthest visible parts of the
specimen to the lens -- relative to the size of the
shell and the distance of the lens.

Photographers solve this problem by shooting their
"close-ups" from as far away as they can. Close-up
lenses or extention tubes are added to a telephoto lens
to 'get back' from the subject.

In the end, all of this means that a scanner can only do
so much. As your desired effect becomes more complex,
your equipment will have to change.

I hope this helps some.


Aloha,

makuabob (Bob Dayle)
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