Procuring a scanner

[The JoJo]

Hi!

My girlfriend and her brother are interested in buying a scanner to scan pictures with. The secondary (maybe primary) goal would be to scan 35mm negatives. Do any of you people have any experience about this?
I wouldn't like to get a scanner just for scanning negatives because I would think a flatbed would be more "flexible". Meaning able to scan normal stuff luke papers and pictures.

But I'm also under the impression now that only the photoscanners are any good for scanning negatives?

I have looked at the Epson 2400 and HP 74xx and HP 54xx. Any comments on any of these?

Or maybe I should just suggest that they buy a digital camera...

Any comments appreciated!

[Sol]

I recall Tony having a flatbed scanner a while back which had a special negative scanner built in. A HP I think.

[Tea]

There is a thread here somewhere about that. Time and the multi-handled iGary had quite a bit to say. Don't buy an Epson scanner without reading it!

[The JoJo]

Wow! That was quick!

You people down under are faster than....:)

Is the thread here or at SR?

[Tea]

That was Kristi, Sol. She still has it. A Canon 660, if I recall.

That thread: http://www.storageforum.net/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=60

[Tea]

Put it down to old-fashioned Aussie service, Jo Jo. Or possibly boredom. Not many live threads at this time of night.

[The JoJo]

Thank you!

[The JoJo]

Hmmm, deffinitely looking at a bit more high end equipment after that thread. Thanks Tea!

So maybe the Epson 2400 or the HP 74xx series. Anyone used any of these?

[Pradeep]

If you are going to be doing lots of film scanning (especially large format) as well as reflective then have a look at the Epson 2450. The film scan speed of the 2450 is rather slow according to the reviews I've read of it tho. Given it's price of US$399 , I just got a non film Epson 1250 for US$99.

[time]

I ended up reasoning one would be better off with a separate dedicated film scanner. Even those who get reasonable results with the flatbeds have to work at it. And even the worst film scanner would blow away the best flatbed.

Alternatively, one could pay a lab to batch scan negatives. For many people, the problem is large numbers of existing negatives rather than a few on an ongoing basis (thanks to the meteoric rise of digicams).

An extension of this approach is that you don't need a high end flatbed. The higher resolutions are only useful for slides and negatives anyway. So unless you want the blinding speed of a high end scanner, there doesn't seem to be much point.

To this end, I gritted my teeth and bought a Cannon 670U to try. At US$75, it costs less than the Epson 1250, has a better twain driver and far better software bundle, and is much faster for most tasks. The warm-up time for the light source on the Epson 1250 is diabolical, and it seems to do it nearly every scan.

Scans of photos and magazine pages are superior to the Epson, believe it or not. Although there are some quirks if you want the best results. You need to scan at the native resolution of 600dpi rather than 300dpi, not because you need the extra resolution, but because the driver does a rotten job of scaling! You can scale it back to 300 in Photoshop without problems. Perhaps more recent versions of the driver are fixed?

And as widely reported, there is a fair bit of noise, but this is easily removed by setting the driver to lightly filter this by default. We saw at least as much noise with the Epson 1250, but there was no inbuilt filter.

Interestingly, both reviewers and end users rate this Canon (and its brother the 676U) much higher than the new Canon 1250U2, which has twice the resolution. But I haven't tried one of those.

So there you have it, not what The JoJo was after, but a cheap LIDE scanner that's actually very good. I never thought I'd see the day.

BTW, reviews of the Canon 1250U2F (the film version) suggest it might be rather good for scanning negatives, but not so hot for other scans.

[The JoJo]

Thanks for the info time and Pradeep!

Hmmmm...Now I'm not sure anymore what the best course of action would be...:)

[Cliptin]

This a problem I'm also stuck with. Today's affordable digital cameras can match my SLR. So for me that means negatives or prints. And now the crux of the problem, I know squad about digital imaging. Once it comes out of the camera I'm basicly lost.

My little HP 3400C seems to do a good job but really I wouldn't know what to look for.

Jojo, Your best bet is probably to buy a digicam and a flatbed. You can get old negatives scanned at the shop. Like time said.