Can you use a fingerprint scanner as a film scanner?

[jsmoove]

Sorry if this is a dumb question. If you laid the film ontop of a fingerprint scanner and shone some light through the film, would you get an image?

 

[rrusso]

You might get something, but not likely anything usable. The plate is capacitively charged in order to detect the ridges in fingerprints.

 

[AgX]

Thus maybe to check for fingerprints on the film...

 

[jsmoove]

What about the non capacitive ones, or are they all capacitive?

 

[mwdake]

Not all FP scanners are capacitive, some are optical scanners.
The optical ones will capture an image, a small one, not sure how much use it would be for film

 

[jsmoove]

@mwdake Yeah optical, just curious if it could be done with a larger fingerprint scanner, like a two-finger one....or if the dpi wouldnt be enough. Example: https://cdn57.androidauthority.net/...16/02/Optical-fingerprint-scanner-840x610.jpg

 

[AgX]

But in reflective mode film as a much lower density range than in transmissive.

 

[mwdake]

@mwdake Yeah optical, just curious if it could be done with a larger fingerprint scanner, like a two-finger one....or if the dpi wouldnt be enough. Example: https://cdn57.androidauthority.net/...16/02/Optical-fingerprint-scanner-840x610.jpg

It's been a few years since I retired but before then I was a software engineer and the applications I wrote integrated fingerprint capability using off the shelf FP readers from Digital Personna and Lumidigim, along with their respective SDK's.
At first we used capacitive readars but when we switched to optical readers I noticed that MS Windows showed the FP device as a camera in Device Manager. That intrigued me so I played around scanning things other than fingers. I can't remember the resolution but I don't recall it being that high. We saved fingerprints as digital data, either proprietary or FP standard and I recall the SDK had options to save as image type formats.

 

[AgX]

@mwdake Yeah optical, just curious if it could be done with a larger fingerprint scanner, like a two-finger one....or if the dpi wouldnt be enough. Example: https://cdn57.androidauthority.net/...16/02/Optical-fingerprint-scanner-840x610.jpg

Such scanner employs the ridges structure of the finger skin. Photographic film rarely has a relief, and sure not such of effectively equal height peaks.