A weak tripod is worse than no tripod; a cheap copy stand is worse than no copy stand. If you attempt to go low-bid your pictures will suffer from camera-shake.

If you have a medium format camera, and especially if you use large format (and especially if you use a PhaseOne, Dicomed, or BetterLight scan back) then you need the most solid copy stand/repro stand that is available.

This model appears to have a control for automatically raising and lowering it. Such electric control is essential if you are in a commercial photo studio.

If you need a large automatic repro stand, the Kaiser seems to have one such model (rePRO RSP, pictured here at the booth of HP Marketing at PMA trade show).

If you need an even large model, as a complete turnkey system, we first checked out the ZBE Satellite. The ZBE uses a large format scan back (such as PhaseOne, though a BetterLight would give a better image at less cost). Since the BetterLight won over PhaseOne two years in a row in an evaluation at PMA trade show, we prefer a system that includes the BetterLight. This would be tti (Tarsia Technical Industries). You can get more information from Improved Technologies: contact e-mail iris@itnh.com.

But in many cases you may find that a turnkey system is better. A turnkey system is all self-contained, with each aspect coordinated with everything else. This would be the Cruse. The top libraries and professional photo labs of Europe have selected this scanner. Indeed just this month the Vatican Secret Archive chose the Cruse over other equipment as the optimal scanner to handle their vast quantity of valuable documents.

Shortly the Cruse scanner was installed in the FLAAR facility. At that time we had more information. Since we didn't have a tti or Kaiser, its easier to discuss what we do have physically in our fine art studio.

  • Redesign May. 2004 / updated July 7, 2001