In January, when I returned from a few months of travel, Brian returned to my studio to do a full overhaul on the working Tango. He dumped the scanners off, we covered them in a tarp, shook hands, and he was off. Brian arrived hours before I was scheduled to leave on a trip to Canada, so the meeting was brief.
I gave Karl a call and Brian, his partner and drum scanner himself, flew down to Arizona, rented a box truck, and drove the scanners to me. What would happen if the scanner was damaged in shipment, or what if it failed on me a year into its use? How would I even know how to turn it on? How do I mount film to the drums without damaging the scanner or the film? There are essentially no resources online for these machines, and the purchase was initially very intimidating.įortunately for the film world, Karl Hudson of Hudson Grafik services and restores these machines, and also provides operator training. An 8x10 transparency can be drum scanned to produce a resolution equivalent to a 709 (possibly slightly larger) megapixel digital file - a feat unachievable by any current digital camera in a single frame.īeing incredibly precise instruments, and being a piece of electrical equipment from the 1990's, I was wary of the purchase at first. The Heidelberg Tango allows me to have full control over my own scans, which I was paying upwards of $250 per scan prior to owning my own scanner. For me, its sole purpose is to scan my film. The user mounts documents or transparent material on acrylic drums, which spin on the machine at revolutions up to 2,000 RPM. Though sounding extremely complex, the process is relatively simple. It captures the image with analog light, producing the most detail possible in each color channel and then converts it to a digital file. With this, you achieve essentially noise-less shadow areas, increased detail in the shadows on transparency film, and overall increased sharpness and tonality. So what the heck is it?Ī drum scanner acts essentially as a precision digital camera, used to scan reflective and transparent materials at an extremely high resolution. In its prime, this model of drum scanner was, and still is, one of the top quality available, fetching a high five figure price tag.
These behemoth's, weighing in at about 550 pounds each, were located in Arizona. One of which was fully functional, the other unit being for parts only. In September of 2017, I managed to come across two used Heidelberg Tango drum scanners.
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