Our Vanguard Scanners and How We Use Them

This is the vanguard scanner that I’m currently using. We have six vanguard scanners at Townsweb as well as two large guardian scanners. In this blog, I will be explaining every detail of the Vanguard scanner, how we use the scanner for various materials and how the camera connects to CaptureOne (our scanning software).

The scanner consists of the Vanguard glass, the book cradle, two overhead scanning lights, the camera stand and the camera mounted overhead.

The first thing we do every morning is switch the camera on and turn the lights on. The camera is connected to the PC through an ethernet cable. This allows us to use the camera in CaptureOne. The ethernet cable is tucked away behind the camera stand and lights ensuring it doesn’t interfere with scanning.

Once the camera is ready, we can adjust the Vanguard to the material that we are scanning. If we are scanning a book, we need to use the book cradle. We usually use the book cradle with the Vanguard glass on top, this flattens the material making sure the book has straight edges for scanning. The book cradle moves depending on the weight on each side of the book, this also makes sure the book is scanned flat.

If we are scanning loose material but the material isn’t flat, we will use a board under the glass to flatten the material. An example of this material is old newspaper cut outs that have folded/uneven edges. For flat loose material, we move the board on top of the glass as the glass isn’t needed. Sometimes we have projects full of loose material but some are flat while some are curved/damaged. In this case we will usually use the glass for the whole project.

The colours slightly change when scanning material under glass compared to without. So it is important that we use the correct colour card setup to make sure the colours are accurate.

In rare cases, we need to adjust the height of the scanning surface, for example for The Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo they want their scans at a higher resolution. To achieve this quality, the scanning surface needs to be closer to the camera. We have done this by putting a flat cradle on top of the board (while the board is over the glass). We then place black cloth over the cradle like we usually would.

The majority of the material in this particular project is detailed photo prints, magazines and negatives. The high resolution of 600 DPI is able to capture finer details and textures while creating a larger file. Most of our projects that consist of written documents usually only want 300 DPI as there is less detail.

If you have materials that need digitising, then please reach out to our team for a friendly chat.