A Transmission Type Scanning System for Ultra High Resolution Scanning

In an exceptional photography project, wall paintings of golden hall in Horyu-ji Temple were photographed on a one-to-one scale on glass dry plates 80 years ago. Unfortunately the temple burned in a fire and major parts of the wall paintings were destroyed. Because of the size of the glass plates, it is difficult to find a proper image grabbing systems to scan them with high resolution. Moreover, there were no color reference charts when the wall paintings were photographed, so it is not possible to create a reference data using a color chart. The method of creating the reference data without using color chart has not been systematized. Therefore, this paper gives a brief record of our project to develop a scanning system that is capable of digitizing these large glass plates with ultra high resolution and a method to reproduce the colours with high color definition from available information.