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[DOC]

Looking for:
Blue Fire: 1940, Wham #2, (Centaur). From an explosion,
scientist Jack Knapp gets the power to turn himself into
a blue flaming human.
and
Blue Flame: 1947, Captain Flight #11 (Four Stars). Another
Human Torch riff, we don't get an origin or name. When not
on fire, he sorta looks like a grown up Toro with a mustache,
clad only in trunks and boots.

I just need the actual stories or panels of how they were drwn.
Thanks,

[narfstar]

I have wham 2 in fiche but no scanner that will scan it. It also has the world's worst superhero concept The Buzzard. Even worse that The Key from Key Comics #1

[dhfh]

Narf,

Assuming you have the tech still, can you pull the fiche up in your reader and snap digicam shots of it?  We have some off-the-fiche-reader pictures of other comics and they're a lot better than no shots at all.

Also, would you be willing to send the fiche out -- like JVJ is doing with his comics -- to be scanned?

Personally, I WOULD KILL TO SEE THE STORIES IN THIS  ONE!!!  Wham #2 has been on my list for years, and I know that I'm not alone....

Just some thoughts.

DHFH

[crimsoncrusader]

Wham #2 would be greatly appreciated, I've been wanting to see artwork of Buzzard and Ermine for a long time.

[narfstar]

Would love to send to anyone wllng to scan

[Yoc]

Hey Narf, LoftyPilot has mentioned in the past he would scan your fiche if you wanted to send them to him.

-Yoc

[DOC]

Wow! Didn't think there were other fans. Buzzard? Ermine? Sounds like 5th banana heroes. How do you scan fiche files??

[Yoc]

It's a very tricky process Doc.
The fiche has to be cut into strips and cardboard frames added to slide them inside the slide scanner area on the lid of most modern scanners.
Focus and colour are the main problems.  There are a lot of variables involved and if you scanner isn't able to get 4800 dpi resolution don't even try.

-Yoc

[DOC]

Hmm I should pratice on some old fiche strips Jerry sent me years ago.

[John C]

Has anybody experimented with film/photography-oriented scanners?  The one I bought a long while back isn't anything impressive when it's dealing in normal scans, but there's a kind of jig that sets it into "negative mode."  There, it scans (you guessed it) pictures from the negative strips you get from developing pictures.

I wonder if such a thing would work for microfiche, with the added assumption that you have to de-invert the colors.

(I'd experiment, myself, but I'm not sure I still have the drivers available.)

[JVJ]

Has anybody experimented with film/photography-oriented scanners?  The one I bought a long while back isn't anything impressive when it's dealing in normal scans, but there's a kind of jig that sets it into "negative mode."  There, it scans (you guessed it) pictures from the negative strips you get from developing pictures.

I wonder if such a thing would work for microfiche, with the added assumption that you have to de-invert the colors.

(I'd experiment, myself, but I'm not sure I still have the drivers available.)

I actually scanned a few illustrations that ended up in my Kinstler book using such a rig, John. A couple were from film negatives, a couple from slides and one from a color negative. Don't know how they would work on fiche. I think the biggest problem you might encounter is the lack of "depth" of information - i.e. the amount of actual pixel information that was "recorded" at the time of "capture." Without that information, one is always trying to recreate data out of less than whole cloth. It's tricky enough with slides, which are pretty rich in information. No one ever anticipated such "reconstructions" with fiche, so the info was never that rich.

Peace, Jim (|:{>

[Yoc]

I'll append a text file Rolster created on how he scans fiche.  It's quite detailed.  If that doesn't scare DOC away maybe he can give his own fiche a try.
Bottom line Jim is correct.  The fiche images are quite small when put beside the image of a normal slide.  Even if focus and colour degeneration aren't an issue (and they always are!) the lack of size makes getting anything of detail from a fiche scan almost impossible.

-Yoc

[John C]

I'll append a text file Rolster created on how he scans fiche.  It's quite detailed.  If that doesn't scare him away maybe he can give his own fiche a try.

Actually, that's pretty much what I was suggesting, though I wasn't familiar with the focal differences.  It's not the same model scanner, but it's definitely the same approach.

Upshot:  Ignore me, because the state of the art is pretty far ahead of where I am.

[Yoc]

Rolster got to be quite good with fiche but he also mentioned that a lot depends on the condition of the original fiche.  Not all were equal so there's a LOT of variables involved in producing a good fiche scan.
And after making the actual scan you need something like Photoshop to massage the results.

[Ed Love]

You can put me down as one that would like to see the issue and characters. It's amazing how many I know about mainly just by hearsay. I keep hoping to see the Green Giant comic pop up some where. Of course, I have a lot of comics to go through here. I just discovered that all of Will O' the Wisp's adventures are here as is Lady Fairplay, two characters I only knew what I had read about them.

Despite many years of scanning, not much advice I can give on fiche. While many high end flatbeds do have negative/transparency adapters, the last time I experimented on fiche years ago, the results were less than desirable for what I wanted (although in keeping with what I've seen of fiche scans I've since seen on the Web, but this was in the day of getting on the Web meant choosing between CompuServe and AOL unless you were a .net type of guy).

[DOC]

I'll append a text file Rolster created on how he scans fiche.  It's quite detailed.  If that doesn't scare DOC away maybe he can give his own fiche a try.
Bottom line Jim is correct.  The fiche images are quite small when put beside the image of a normal slide.  Even if focus and colour degeneration aren't an issue (and they always are!) the lack of size makes getting anything of detail from a fiche scan almost impossible.

-Yoc

That sounds great Yoc, what do I need to do??

[Yoc]

Hi Doc,
Look back on page one here - http://goldenagecomics.co.uk/forum/index.php/topic,1453.msg14963.html#msg14963
At the bottom I appended a text file with Rolster's method.  It tells you everything he did to scan fiche.
Results may vary.

-Yoc

[JVJ]

The other aspect of fiche scanning that is crucial, guys,
is the maximum scan resolution of your HARDWARE. A lot of scanners advertise that they can scan 4800 ppi, but if you look closely, only 600 or 1200 of those are native hardware resolution and the rest is software extrapolation - i.e. the software makes up the extra resolution by adding extra pixels that it calculates from the ones it actually captured. So you can have a high resolution scan with no more real "information" than you'd get from a low rez scanner. If I were to attempt to scan a microfiche, I'd be STARTING at 2400 to 3600 ppi. What are you folks (like darkmark?) doing for fiche scans?

Just curious...

(|:{>

[Yoc]

I think that text file mentions that as well Jim.  If you are below 4800 ppi in native mode you might as well forget about it or resign yourself that it will not be a very sharp book without massive amounts of PhotoShop work and even then it'll be like mud when beside an actual paper scan of the same page.
But as we've repeatedly said - a little fiche is better than no fiche and as paper comes in the fiche can be removed to make room.

-Yoc

[DOC]

Ok I got the text, I don't have an Epson, but maybe I can tinker with the one I have. So if Narf would like to send me fiche I can see about scanning and maybe get the copies we need.
So it's two pieces of posterboard to get mm measurement, fiche then glass, is that about right?

[JVJ]

I think that text file mentions that as well Jim. 
-Yoc

I am extremely sleep-deprived at the moment, Yoc, and couldn't locate the text file you said you appended to the thread. Where would that be?

Sorry for the extra hassle... (|:{>

[Yoc]

Right click on this link and save-as Jim.

http://tinyurl.com/mg7olr

-Yoc

[rez]

Ok I got the text, I don't have an Epson, but maybe I can tinker with the one I have. So if Narf would like to send me fiche I can see about scanning and maybe get the copies we need.
So it's two pieces of posterboard to get mm measurement, fiche then glass, is that about right?

Doc- So you are attempting a first time scan of a fiche file? That's worthy of an applaud.
Any success yet?

[DOC]

Thanks Rez. I plan to try tomorrow, wish me luck.

[Yoc]

You got some to scan?
Good luck for sure Doc!