Allo allo... I got this scanner recently and I think a lot of you folks might find it, and my experiences so far with it - interesting.

http://www.mustek.com/html/prod_scan/A3usb.html

Its been a bit a of a personal quest of mine for a loooong time, ever since I mustered up the courage to buy and draw on 11x17" comic-sized bristol board, to find a scanner that would scan that size of paper... without costing frick'n $2000.

I use a cheap-o $50 scanner for just about all the scanning I do.. .and for the web that's all you really need. Just get the line art in there and then do the rest digitally.

So this guy is $160, which still is *not cheap* (then again super-sizing at Wendy's is *not cheap* when you pay your own mortgage like I do), but at the same time... for YEARS I've been searching for an 11x17" scanner that did not go up to that next level of scanning that costs $2000 or more (yes, I know, run-on sentence and yes I did hit that nail already).

If you're an 11x17 incher artist I'm sure your eyes are glued to this post already. But if you're not I guess its a little hard to explain why I'm getting so worked up over this. In the past, whenever I've scanned, I've always had to scan my artwork in 3 sections, the top, the bottom, and the middle. Then I had to spend time stitching the scans back together into one piece. Its not *that* bad of a process... but its always been a stupid one.

So now.. the dream of one-pass 11x17 scanning is finally within reach!

There's a really scathing review of the scanner on epinions here, but in my honest opinion that reviewer doesn't really have the background with scanners that a lot of us do. So some of her expectations, like perfect color translation on a scan to me are a bit unrealistic.

I've only got the scanner today (june 16)...! So while I've been having fun with it, I can't really say much for its long term reliability.

As it turns out they shipped it just using the scanner box itself. No larger box filled with styrofoam peanuts to cushion the smaller scanner box - just the raw scanner box itself. There were two pieces of shipping tape strapped over the open side of the box to keep it closed - they said, "IF SEAL IS BROKEN CHECK CONTENTS BEFORE ACCEPTING". One of the seals was broken.

Apparently this scanner can be bought over amazon as well... but I didn't know that at the time I placed the order. I ordered from this provantage.com place and it was actually a pretty crappy experience. It was only email confirmation... and as a test I tried to call them on the phone and no one picked up - I hung on for a few minutes and got shunted to voicemail. On top of that although they sent me a link to an order tracking page... the only thing on the page was a notice that this item routinely shipped without any shipping status - so I had no idea what shipping company was used or where the item was during transit.

At any rate, here's the box it came in:

Here's a pic of the scanner itself, with my old consumer-sized Microtek 3700 sitting on top of it. As you can see, the A3USB is a big piggy:

The reviewer on epinions complained that the scanner glass itself was cloudy on the inside and that turned out to be true for my model as well. Nevertheless I did some scans and in my opinion.. at least for what I'm doing - it doesn't matter.

So here are some scans... all scans are done at 150dpi originally btw...

http://www.ponju.com/External/a3usb_enhanced_shrunk.jpg

What I did here was take 3 pages, one drawn in blue pencil, one drawn in pencil, and one inked and scanned them all at the same time. You can see what the raw scan looks like, then individually enhanced sections transposed on top. You can also see the piece of drafting tape I used to fasten the pages together at the top - its the round dot thingy. I wouldn't worry too much about the apparent side shading on the blue pencil enhance - this is where the edge of the paper ran off the edge of the scanner glass - that shading indicates the paper itself being forced to rise away from the glass due to the plastic frame around the glass. This is a common problem that anyone who scans material larger than the scanner glass runs into with any scanner.

http://www.ponju.com/External/a3usb_pencil_section.jpg

This is the raw unedited version of the pencil portion of the scan. Its scanned at 150dpi. The bristol board this pencil was drawn on is actually a few years old, so the actual pencil markings have smudged a bit over time, and the paper itself is yellowing slightly.

This is a scan of a Maaya Sakamoto CD single cover. I haven't adjust the colors themselves, just the brightness levels and contrast.

http://www.ponju.com/External/Maaya_Sakamo...d_cover_raw.jpg

Here's the raw scan itself. I butted my trusty L-Square ruler against the cd cover so you can see how large it is. This raw scan is completely untouched, other than saving it with JPG "High" compression.

Wai wai - so overall I'm pretty happy with the scanner. The shipping turned out to be a bit of an adventure, and the scanner glass itself is strangely foggy... but I'm very happy with the overall quality of the scans itself. I don't care at all for *smart* scan software that supposedly auto-adjusts the image at scantime. I'm a firm believer of getting the raw image into Photoshop, then manually adjusting the image parameters as needed.

So this scanner fits my needs pretty well. Its by no means something you'd want to use to digitally archive paintings in the Louvre, but for me.. all I really need is something to capture the lineart, and this works for me.

hehe - just don't order from provantage.com is all I'm saying. ^^;

You'll need USB 2.0 as well or else the scanner will behave a little strangely. The other nice thing I forgot to mention is that this scanner is very good about turning itself off when not in use, then back on as necessary.

wah - thankies. I've always been a fan of Hanna the Nazi video store clerk myself. ^^;

Well here's a 600dpi raw scan: http://www.ponju.com/External/a3usb_captain_ribeye.jpg

And here's a level-optimized, and shrunk down to what I consider an optimal resolution of 150x150 version:

The original is drawn on a 2x2 inch square.

And here's an 11x17 incher that's been level optimized and shrunk down to the target resolution I use, 669x1024:

http://www.ponju.com/External/a3usb_piggyhunter_page.jpg

[quote:bb4da967ea="rezo"]Thanks for the review, I'm going to need a large scanner soon and have no idea of what to get.

Do you know if it has problems with pages that have washes on them? I do a lot of washes on less then sturdy paper, and all of the miniscule warping in the paper shows up pretty severely as grey patches in my cheap scanner(my scanner sucks), so I use other people's as often as possible. That's the only thing I'm really concerned about.