ZBE was the most solidly constructed automatic repro stand system we had yet found, until we experienced other brands.

If you need to photograph maps, 3D objects, or anything that will fit on a table, then ZBE was an ideal choice in the 1990's.

The ZBE was especially ideal for museums or any archaeology or ethnographic project that has to photograph all kinds of objects. Botanical gardens can photograph plant specimens from above. Geologists can photograph rock samples. Libraries can photograph rare books.

ZBE Satellite copy stand

But, like many companies, ZBE moved into other products, such as their nice Chromira RGB digital printer. In the meantime, a German company, Cruse, caught up and then surpassed the Satellite. Today (2004) Cruse is the worldwide leader for high-end sophisticated reprographic copy stand scanners. We can say this because we have used a Cruse scanner camera at the FLAAR digital imaging studio for three years now. The results of made-in-Germany quality are impressive.