pulled the fresnel lens out of the overhead projector and placed it on top of the scan bed. uh. i dont really know what i'm doing here. but i think??? that the fresnel might "correct" the light heading to the sensor? to maybe yield a more consistent exposure over the whole frame? shot one is with the fresnel facing in, second is with it facing out. in and out here relative to where the light comes from in the overhead projector since im attempting to reverse its optics for capturing images? uhhh im fairly certain the fresnel needs to be a set distance away from the scanner to actually "work" but its certainly Doing Something here. oh and all the crap on the photo is from the nasty plastic screen on the scanner itself, i'll remove it once i'm more confident with what i'm doing here.

i found a dedicated scanner! controlled via usb! works right out of the box with xsane!

but uhhhh... it sees differently.
in the first image, you can see the wild depth of field that it's capable of
and in the second you can see that it sees through a lens... how my eye would. or how another lens would perceive it.
it's not scanning the projected image from the lens like the epson does. it's... taking a photo much more how a camera with a lens mounted to it already would. and i have NO idea why. i guess it's a different type of scanner? maybe i can mod it to behave the way i want? is this why i see people mention needing a ground glass in the setup? if so then why doesn't the epson need it? sooo many questions.