Photography

Thank you!

The n650u looks very similar to the lide 30, so I’ll assume that it’s more or less the same inside.

The sensor assembly is fairly straightforward. A plastic housing that gets pulled by a cord. Once you liberate the assembly from its track/cord/whatever is holding it and moving it around, you get to the good part.

The sensor itself, and the RGB LED that supplies the light is on a PCB that’s mounted to the plastic carriage from the underside, it’s held together by plastic tabs (it’s a few years since I did this, so the details might be off, but it wasn’t a difficult task). Use a sharp utility knife to cut the tabs and remove the sensor PCB. I’ve used strips of gaffers tape to put it all together again. The LED looks like a small white rectangle stood perpendicuar to the PCB, I simply broke it off. This makes the canon drivers throw an error, but VueScan doesn’t care. If you’re squeamish about actively destroying your scanner, you can probably figure out a way to cover it up with some tape or foil.

The circular vignetting you’re seeing is due to the pinhole array, it’s a thin black plastic strip with a bunch of tiny holes set in front of a slit, just rip it off, its either glued or welded in place, but I’ve never had a problem getting it out with some pliers. While you’re messing about in that area, get rid of the prism that spreads the light from LED as well, it probably won’t do much of anything if left in, but it feels better to remove it.

Once you run the camera in this state, you will discover that you get uneven exposure from edge to edge, a linear vignette perpendicular to the axis which the sensor moves. This happens because the plastic housing of the sensor is throwing shade. So use any available abrasive machine, and cut that housing down to its essential functions of holding the sensor in its place, and as a pressure against the glass plate.

Unfortunately I don’t have any large format lenses around, so I’ve stuck a magnifying glass to the front of my camera (you know, gotta keep it punk rock), but the way I handle aperture is by cutting holes into black cardboard (very thin cardboard) at about the size I think will work, and taping the hole across the lens. One of my goals with this project is to try make photography into a tactile, direct and intuitive process so I try to avoid unnecessary machinery.

The reason you’re only getting grayscale is due to how a CIS scanner renders color. During a normal scan, the RGB LED only flashes one channel at a time, and the driver figures out if it’s looking at the red, green or blue signal all by itself, and at the end it interpolates the data to render a full color image file for you to enjoy. I’ve been playing around with the idea of tapping the signal path and use it to trigger an external RGB lighting rig in a studio, to get full color images of models. But so far it’s only a funny thought!

And lastly, the sensor is exceptionally sensitive to infrared light, to the point that the heat from the internal electronics of the scanner causes streaking. I’m using a few pieces of carefully placed aluminum foil to shield the sensor in select areas, and that reduces the issue to a tolerable amount.

Good luck on your build! This project has given me a boatload of insights into both photography, electronics and computing, and I hope you will have a similarly awesome journey.

Edit: im happy to answer any further questions you might have. it would be awesome to see some shots once you get the contraption up and running!