Shopping for a good scanner

DonkeyStyle \o/

As the thread title suggests, I'm in the market for a good scanner.
Right now I'm using a printer/scanner combo device, and I find the quality a bit lacking (600x1200dpi according to specs).
My budget is in the ballpark of 300 euro.
The ability to scan slides & negatives would be a huge bonus.

The whole reason for the upgrade is that we've got like 30 or 40 albums dating back a few decades, and it's going to be a very time consuming job to scan the whole lot... so I want to get this done right the first time, preserving as much detail as possible.
Instead of doing it on a relatively crappy scanner, then regretting the quality later.

Really what I'm looking for is shopping pointers and what to look out for.
I know with digital cameras (and have found out first hand) that megapixels aren't everything... could the same be said for a scanners dpi?
ie. do manufacturers just bloat the reported dpi while using shíte components for everything else? ... tbh I'm always suspicious when I only see one specification that I can compare against.
What would be the main things you'd use in your scanner-shopping criteria?

Any comments/suggestions welcome.
Cheers.

DonkeyStyle \o/

Also, is there often fake/interpolated dpi reported for some scanners? ... or is it always absolutely the native and real dpi that you're given?

Redundo

If all you want to do is scan in prints of photographs, then any cheap flatbed scanner will be enough. If you want to scan original negatives and slides then you need something a little better.

Dpi is only important for how large you want to print an image. A 2400 dpi scanner should be detailed enough to allow you to print a 35mm neg up to 12x8 (or A4) size.

Personally I use the Epson 4490 and find that it works great as a mid-range scanner. I've scanned both negatives and slides, 35mm and medium format.

The biggest thing about a scanner is how time consuming it is and there is no way around it. So whichever scnner you buy, plan on spending many hours loading, scanning, unloading and saving all your negs and prints.

mloc

if you are serious enough about getting reasonable scans from negatives and slides, a dedicated transparency scanner will give you very good results, although they are a bit more expensive. the nikon coolscan range is a good place to start looking.

formatman

http://www.epson.co.uk/products/scanners/Perfectionv700Photo.htm

pm for a quote I might be able to get cheap through a contact

DonkeyStyle \o/

Redundo wrote:

If all you want to do is scan in prints of photographs, then any cheap flatbed scanner will be enough.

Sure, and the one I have does an alright-ish job of it... but if I can make a better job of it, then I'd like to.
And we have a fair amount of slides, so yeah... I think a new one is definitely on the cards.

Redundo wrote:

Dpi is only important for how large you want to print an image.

What I'm more concerned about is having good quality digital versions of them... so if a higher scanner dpi can pick up more detail, then I'm all for it.
Then there's colour reproduction, which is still a big question mark for me... I suppose all I can do for that is read the reviews.

Redundo wrote:

The biggest thing about a scanner is how time consuming it is and there is no way around it. So whichever scnner you buy, plan on spending many hours loading, scanning, unloading and saving all your negs and prints.

Yeah I'm under no illusions about that... which is why I want a decent scanner before I invest such serious time into this project.
It's the kind of thing I don't want to have to do twice.

mloc wrote:

if you are serious enough about getting reasonable scans from negatives and slides, a dedicated transparency scanner will give you very good results, although they are a bit more expensive. the nikon coolscan range is a good place to start looking.

Mmm, I saw a few of the nikon scanners online today...now if price is any measure of seriousness, then I guess I'm not that serious about it
When you say "dedicated transparency scanner", do you mean that's all they are? (ie. they'll scan negs & slides but nothing else?)
I've seen a few today that had transparency adaptors... but I'm guessing they wouldn't be dedicated, correct?

formatman wrote:

pm for a quote I might be able to get cheap through a contact

Cheers for the offer, but I'll pass.

311

I want to get a scanner aswell that does the odd bit of negative ,but doesn't take a 24hr exposure to scan a polaroid.

mloc

DonkeyStyle \o/ wrote:

When you say "dedicated transparency scanner", do you mean that's all they are? (ie. they'll scan negs & slides but nothing else?)
I've seen a few today that had transparency adaptors... but I'm guessing they wouldn't be dedicated, correct?

Yeah they only do negs and slides, I'm afraid, albeit at much better quality. You're better off scanning from the most original source you can for archive stuff, so if you can scan the neg instead of the print, i'd recommend it.

Do you use photoshop? Whilst it does take an age to scan in photos (in general, I don't mean becuase of photoshop), it has some ways of speeding the process up, especially with prints.

gyppo

Epson are generally good.

However, another thing thats often overlooked with scanners is the software thats bundled with them, which is generally limited. ( It is with HP stuff anyway).

Do a search on the web for "Vuescan" and try out a trial copy. It supports most scanner makes, and allows you to control your scanner much better.
I find it very good.

DonkeyStyle \o/

mloc wrote:

You're better off scanning from the most original source you can for archive stuff, so if you can scan the neg instead of the print, i'd recommend it.

Mmm hadn't thought of that... yeah makes a lot of sense alright.
Though we've got photos going back 60 years, some even more than that I think... so we'd definitely not have negs for I'd say most of them.
That's interesting aswell, because of ageing... for older photos that have been through the trenches wouldn't their respective negs be in tip-top shape? (any negs we have would be kept in envelopes untouched)
I know we have a decent amount of negs alright... it'd be very cool indeed to get around the whole old-photo-caked-in-years-of-greasy-crap problem.

Question: The very existance of dedicated transparency scanners gives me an inkling that the normal flatbeds with transparency adaptors would be pretty poor quality? (ie. you wouldn't even bother using them)

mloc wrote:

Do you use photoshop?

My weapon of choice is PaintShop Pro 7 (before Corel bought out Jasc and destroyed it IMO)... but yeah I do have access to Photoshop.
But I was under the impression that whatever app you use - it would be going through the same driver interface anyway, so never really gave this much thought, beyond just using the software I'm most comfortable in.

gyppo wrote:

However, another thing thats often overlooked with scanners is the software thats bundled with them, which is generally limited.

Yeah, I find the software bundled with most things is quite limited... companies like ULEAD seem to have cornered the market in newbie-friendly and IMO utterly horrible non-standard user interfaces that actually end up being harder to use.
Again though, I come back to the twain driver interface for the scanner... like the one I've got at the moment, anything I need to configure for the scanner is done through a nice big Epson branded control app.... I only consider the software I'm scanning into for when I need to tweak the contrast/gamma/saturation etc.

Thanks for the replies so far, definitely food for thought... keep em coming.

mloc

what i do for photos is scan them in four at a time (for normal size prints), and then use photoshop's auto crop feature which makes a seperate image file for each.

You can then automate the process using Actions to resize, perform basic colour correction, and export.

As for negatives fading, yes they do, but since they are usually kept in better storage conditions and away from light, they tend to fade less than prints.

DonkeyStyle \o/

Actually I found quite an interesting set of articles here for anyone else interested >> http://www.kenrockwell.com/tech/scantek.htm

So far I'm looking at the Epson Perfection scanners here...
http://komplett.ie/k/kl.asp?bn=10381
Still a bit unsure about which one to go for

DonkeyStyle \o/

Redundo wrote:

If all you want to do is scan in prints of photographs, then any cheap flatbed scanner will be enough. If you want to scan original negatives and slides then you need something a little better.

Mmm yeah, I actually read that most prints now days are only 300dpi :eek:
Still though, even scanning them at 600dpi, I feel like there's detail missing... the range of colours lacking too.
Maybe it's not so much the dpi as the general quality of the scanner.
In addition to that, we've about a thousand slides, so hmm

Personally I use the Epson 4490 and find that it works great as a mid-range scanner. I've scanned both negatives and slides, 35mm and medium format.

At the moment it's a toss up between the 4490 and the 4990... the 4990 got rave reviews, but looking at the specs, I'm left wondering what the extra 100 euro is buying me.
I notice > here < that there's two 4490's ... a 'photo' and an 'office' model... what's the difference?

jlang

DonkeyStyle \o/ wrote:

two 4490's ... a 'photo' and an 'office' model... what's the difference?

Seems clear enough - the office model includes the optional document feeder. No difference for scanning of negatives.

DonkeyStyle \o/

Oh right, duh, sorry... yeah... I remember spotting that yesterday.

DonkeyStyle \o/

Just an update incase anyone was wondering...
I went with the Epson Perfection 4990 Photo and I'm thrilled with it.
The quality I'm getting from slides and negs so far is absolutely jaw-dropping.
Scanning the negs instead of the prints is working out great, so thanks for that suggestion. (it turns out we've got a whole bag of negs weighing almost a KG :eek:)
It's cool aswell, because I can slap in a few negs (4 negs x 6 photos on each = 24 photos in one go), hit scan and leave them going while I do something else... then when I come back... 24 new images ready and waiting.

I've had slides scanned and put on cd for me before from a shop, but the quality of this thing absolutely whoops ass over whatever scanner they must have been using.