how to make good copies of usgs maps?

[arghman]

Anyone familiar with high-resolution scanning/printing/photography?

I have acquired a number of "vintage" USGS maps of NH from the era when they were hand-engraved USGS 15' maps without the green shaded vegetation cover shown. (1890-1950) They tend to be in the 15"x20" size with 13"x17.5" of printed material. A small sample is attached (3/4" by 1" is about all that would fit in 100KB).

Was planning on framing them to display on my wall, but then got framer's remorse... I would like to scan/photograph some of them before I lock them away behind mat & glass, but have no idea how. Kinko's has 400dpi scanning services which are expensive and not high enough resolution to capture the contour lines. I tried another company in Manchester that I'll call "X Graphics" which told me they could do it, but they had 300dpi & misled me into thinking otherwise. I've tried taking multiple scans on the 11"x14" scanner here at work (600dpi/1200dpi options), but there's enough distortion that they won't join together. 600dpi seems like it looks decent enough to handle the fine detail... note however that we are talking 13"x17.5" => 7800x10500 = 82megapixels which is definitely beyond digital camera range.

any suggestions? A friend of mine brought up the possibility of photographing it with good film & scanning the slide with a slide scanner.

Then there's the whole problem of printing; printer resolution is even worse than scanning, esp. when there are off-white shades and you get dithering.

 

[snowshoe]

I say just hang the real ones up. You can probably get them mated to where they will be protected. My theroy is why lock them away when you can hang them up and enjoy them. It is hard to apperciate them locked away or looking at a copy.

 

[arghman]

Oh, I'm going to frame the real ones; I've already made four of the frames up & cut some mats. But I had wanted to give a copy of one of them to an acquaintance (or rather, I had wanted to give the map to an acquaintance but wanted it for myself as well )

 

[swamp]

You can find high-res scans of most of the old USGS maps at http://docs.unh.edu/nhtopos/nhtopos.htm . Go ahead and frame your originals.

 

[Warren]

1200 dpi would be a standard target resolution for black and white line art, at least in my opinion (I'm employed as graphics weenie). That resolution would allow you to reproduce the maps on a good printer with little/no degradation.

I would look to print houses. Desktop scanners with beds larger than 11 x 17 are rare, you may have to use a drum scanner. They will be really pricey as they are used to doing color work for business. Look to cities that may have such services (Boston, Portland, Burlington). Staples is based in Farmingham (sp?) Mass., and I think the catalog group is there, if they are not completely in house there may be a place there as well, but Boston is likely your best bet.

The Canon Bubblejet large format printers had large scanner beds, but I think they topped out at 300 dpi, though this may have changed I haven't looked at them for a while.

Net searches, companies specializing in arts archiving, museums, architectural firms, galleries may have good leads.

To capture the most information have it scanned in greyscale, not as line art. Then you can convert to line art (meaning a black and white bitmap) as needed. I'll be taking my graphic weenie hat off for the long weekend after this post, but if you bother me next week I can ask one my print vendors what type of scanners would handle that size and rez and places you might find one.

PS: If you know someone who works at a newspaper, ask them.

Those maps sound cool, I would definitely try to capture them into a file.

 

[peakbagger]

I have pretty good luck printing out full size USGS maps using maptech files on a HP 1050C wide format plotter. Most engineering supply houses have wide format high resolution scanners that should be able to scan the maps (at a price!). Of course the resultant files are going to be huge. Spiller in Lewiston maine and Maine Surveyors in Yarmouth are two possibilities.

 

[Davehiker]

There is another link to the maps at UNH, together with others from other states in the northeast: Maptech Historical USGS Maps Be sure to read the sections at the bottom "About The Collection" and "Historic Topographic Maps." These maps are great.

 

[arghman]

I appreciate the suggestion re: the UNH site; it's a great site and I've used it for a few years for lots of reasons (everything from historical research to because I'm too cheap to buy a new topo map ), and the people behind it should get an award -- BUT the scans are 200dpi for practical reasons (disk space) and don't do justice to the contour lines. (And there's still the issue of pasting together separate scans, which is doable with photographs but very difficult with line art.)

Warren-- Thanks for the helpful suggestions, I'll try to contact you after Turkey Weekend is over.