Part I: First, remember to bring have the microfilm to be scanned and a storage device on hand (CD-R, DVD-R, USB flash drive or portable hard drive) with enough space to hold all the scans generated. The following explains how to load microfilm properly into the MS-300 Microfilm Scanner.
STEP 1) Turn on microfilm scanner by pressing the switch in front.
STEP 2) Grasp the silver handle attached to the glass plate located below the lens and pull towards you. The top of the glass plate will be pushed open by the end of the lens.
STEP 3) In-between the sheets of glass, gently place the microfilm to be scanned in the tray face down. Push glass plates back in so they are in their original position.
STEP 4) Maneuver tray, which can be moved back and forth and side to side, to find the page you wish to scan on the Microfilm Scanner screen. Position the page within the four brackets on the scanner screen. You can use the blue zoom wheel located above the lens to zoom in and out of the page.
Part II: Now that you have the film loaded and set up, you can start scanning using CapturePerfect 1.0 software.
STEP 1) Click the start button, and then click CapturePerfect 1.0.
STEP 2) Once CapturePerfect 1.0 opens, click file, then setting scanner. Edit mode, dots per inch, etc. accordingly. For resolution, select grayscale and 400 dpi, which produces very clear results. Deskew should be checked. Brightness can be set at first as brightness auto, and can be adjusted if scan is subsequently too light or dark. For best results, select page size as auto detect with margin. Click OK.
STEP 3) After you configure your settings, click file and scan to page. The page displayed on the Microfilm Scanner will be scanned.
STEP 4) If you are happy with the results of the scan, click file, save as (you can save files as TIFFs, JPEGs, or PDFs without OCR) or move into batch mode if you are scanning more than one page. Make sure this scan is satisfactory, because subsequent scans in batch mode will look the same as this “sample” scan. If you unhappy with the scan, adjust brightness, positioning of the tray, etc. and rescan.
Part III: If you are scanning an entire document and your sample scan is satisfactory, you can move into batch mode to more quickly scan the document.
STEP 1) Click file, scan to batch.
STEP 2) In the save dialogue box, create a new folder wherever you are saving the document, select either TIFF, JPEG or PDF, and type in the filename for the document. If selecting TIFF, be sure to save with no compression. Unclick the box multi-page file so your document is saved as multiple files within the folder. CapturePerfect 1.0 will automatically append numbers at the end of your scans and will not overwrite your files. Choose your file type and click save.
STEP 3) Another dialogue box will appear. Click start scanning. The page on the scanner screen will be scanned.
STEP 4) Once scan is complete, a dialogue box will appear. Reposition the tray to the next sequential image on the microfilm. Click continue scanning. Repeat until document is scanned. Once document is scanned completely, click stop scanning on the open dialogue box and quit CapturePerfect 1.0. Remember to turn off the scanner and take out microfilm before leaving.
NOTE: A two-page frame scanned at 400 dpi and grayscale will produce a 9 MB TIFF file and will take about 10 seconds to scan. Once scans are completed, contrast may be low and overly gray. To correct this, do a levels adjustment in Photoshop. Also, the border may be too thick, in which case make a marquee in Photoshop and crop to provide consistency throughout the document.
written by Ross Harris