Phosphoimagers vs Instantimager

[Peter Heifetz]

In article <36odp6$6p4 at mserv1.dl.ac.uk>, grggta at picr.cr.man.ac.uk (Graham
Atherton) wrote:


[...]

>   Neither machine gives publishable figure quality output - autoradiography
> is still king here!

Not necessarily so - check the scan resolution you are using.  At least on
our Phosphorimager w/ImageQuant 3.3, you can specify 88 or 176 micron
pixel sizes.  88 gives very nice output when pulled into a draw program at
8-bit (we use a Mac) and printed out on a dye-sub printer or sent directly
to a slide imager.  The drawback is file size; at this scan resolution, an
entire large plate image is something like 40 mb.  Our typical 4" x 6" 
protein gels give files around 3 mb, which are manageable if you don't
need to use floppies to transfer files.  If you're only interested in
quantification and not high quality output, 176 micron is perfectly
adequate.

--Peter

-- 
Peter Heifetz
Duke University
Developmental, Cell, and Molecular Biology Group