Cataloguing in Gippsland

Musings of a Cataloguer at Large in Gippsland. Just personal thoughts - absolutely no bearing on the thoughts of any organisation with which I am working.

My Photo
Name:
Location: Victoria, Australia

Saturday, September 1, 2012

Flip Pal Scaner

Yesterday, I bought a new toy. A Flip-Pal Mobile Scaner. Along with a lot of others, I fronted up to Gould Books at the Family History Expo at Cranbourne, and said "Give me one". I bought it with a bag (purple, for those who know me), for $259.00. Prices HERE.
This is totally portable, and I have already mastered scanning little snapshots (above), and photos up to postcard size and slightly above. I have yet to learn the "stitching" function, where you scan larger photos bit by bit.
(For the observant - yes, the photo should be face down - I have already scanned it, and am recording the details on the reverse).

I have also mastered taking off the lid and turning the scanner upside down, one of the functions I really wanted, for scanning snapshots pasted in albums, or even with corners, where they may be damaged taking them in and out. Just a quick scan at the start, so I know what I have, without removing it from the album. The Historical Society at Maffra has a huge, fragile album with all photos pasted in - it can only be photographed at the minute, which is okay, but not as crisp as a scan.

The photo above? One of my mother, with a clock given to her at her workplace as a wedding present. One wag, on seeing it asked if she couldn't get a wristwatch, and had to carry this around.

It scans at either 300 dpi or 600 dpi, and produces a good scan for working purposes at those resolutions. It works immediately, without further programming, but I needed to print the User's Guide (put the card into my computer), which is also available by download from Flip-Pal, to be able to work out how to move from 300 dpi to 600dpi. Not a problem.

But what has me most excited is that this does not need to be connected to a computer, and is one-touch (just push the green button) operation. Another volunteer will be able to work with this while I am on the computer, and I then just take the card out of the scanner, download them to my computer and manage them from there. It is going to solve a lot of our problems with scanning small photos.

1 Comments:

Blogger Heather said...

Hi Linda - what are your thoughts on the Flip Pal 18 months down the track? Are you still happy with it?
Best wishes,
Heather

March 6, 2014 at 7:46 PM  

Post a Comment

<< Home