Direct digitizing

[Kenelm Philip]

	With regard to the suggestion of using a piece of glass above the
specimen in a flatbed scanner to gain control over the background--I fear
that would produce a reflection of the scanning lamp as it went by. A safer
method  of getting a light background is simply to get the white background
physically close to the specimen, rather than half a pin's length or more
behind it.

	By the way, out of curiosity I tried Gary Anweiler's trick of
scanning a pinned specimen (a butterfly). I got a quite recognizable
image--but the overall effect was a soft focus. The veins in the wings
were hard to distinguish, for example. Certainly this works if you want
something quick and dirty--but a depinned specimen can be placed much
closer to the platen and yields a noticeably sharper image.

							Ken Philip
fnkwp at aurora.alaska.edu