Specimen imaging at the Herbarium Berolinense (B)

Hardware equipment for specimen imaging at B

Currently we are digitizing on three separate workstations

Two Pentacon Scan 5000 (body) cameras with max. resolution 8192 x 12000 (depending on lens), trilineare CCD-lines, colour depth 3 x 12 Bit

Lens: Schneider Kreuznach APO COMPONON HM 4,0/60 (provides maximum resolution)
Camera mounting system: with integrated transmitted light source. Transmitted light base with four 13 W daylight fluorescents 5400 K, illuminated area 43 x 35 cm (16.9 x 13.8 in.). Illuminance 3300 cd/m2., Column height: 1 m (40 in.) , metal plate with magnets
camera 1) Lighting equipment: Fa. Kaiser Fototechnik, 2 lamps: 4 x 36 w each, daylight fluorescent lamp 5400 K, CRI = 90-100, light emitting area approx. 50 x 21 cm (19.7 x 8.3 in.)
camera 2) Lighting equipment: Fa. Kaiser Fototechnik, 2 lamps: 2 x 55 w each, daylight fluorescent lamp 5400 K, CRI = 90-100, light emitting area approx. 64 x 21 cm (25.2 x 8.3 in.)

One Pentacon Scan 6000 camera (body) with max. resolution 10600 x 10600 (depending on lens), trilineare CCD-lines, colour depth 3 x 12 Bit

Lens: Schneider Kreuznach APO COMPONON HM 4,0/60 (provides maximum resolution)
Camera mounting system: with integrated transmitted light source. Transmitted light base with four 13 W daylight fluorescents 5400 K, illuminated area 43 x 35 cm (16.9 x 13.8 in.). Illuminance 3300 cd/m2., Column height: 1, 50 m , metal plate with magnets
Lighting equipment: Fa. Kaiser Fototechnik, 2 lamps: 2 x 55 w each, daylight fluorescent lamp 5400 K, CRI = 90-100, light emitting area approx. 64 x 21 cm (25.2 x 8.3 in.)

Specimen data inserted via MS Access client in our MS SQL database
Herbarium sheet is scanned via Silverfast in Photoshop
Adjusting contrast and brightness
Image saved as an uncompressed tiff file with ~ 250 MB, using the object barcode as filename
Nightly cron job converts the tiff file to

ThumbsPlus scans for updates in the fpx file directory tree and insert the image metadata in our database where it is connected via the filename (barcode) with the specimen data also containing the barcode
The specimen data is published with a Adobe ColdFusion MX driven website
Serving the fpx images with the TrueSpectra Imageserver by using the Neptune Labs FSIViewer as an flash interface for image handling See flash film...
By using the Neptune Labs ZoomCache server every request to an image area is cached and will be served from this cache when it is requested again

Berendsohn, W. G., Einsiedel, B., Merkel, U. Nowak-Krawietz, H., Röpert, D. & Will, I. 2005: Digital imaging at the Herbarium Berolinense. In: Häuser, C. L., Steiner, A., Holstein, J. & Scoble, M. J. (ed.): Digital Imaging of Biological Type Specimens - A Manual of Current Best Practice. Stuttgart.
Pentacon Scannerkameras
Kaiser Fototechnik
NeptuneLabs FSIViewer