I'm going absolutely insane...

[SiG Lady]

GAH!! I've spent at LEAST a year researching information on decent flatbed scanners (for scanning photos or flat art stuff) and I'm still at square one!!! Would SOMEONE please recommend a good scanner?!?!?!?!? I can spend upwards of $500 or so if need be. Don't want a quickie/cheepie scanner. I've had it with looking.

(Thanx.)

[dlcrouch]

i can't suggest one, but you might try looking at the reviews on www.cnet.com

[AlamoShooter]

I may be insAne already ...but I like them with some "shape" to them

[JThompson]

GAH!! I've spent at LEAST a year researching information on decent flatbed scanners (for scanning photos or flat art stuff) and I'm still at square one!!! Would SOMEONE please recommend a good scanner?!?!?!?!? I can spend upwards of $500 or so if need be. Don't want a quickie/cheepie scanner. I've had it with looking.

(Thanx.)

One of my things is photography... get a Microtek i900. It's in your price range and will do nicely for what you want to do. It has high speed USB and firewire ports built it too.

Edited May 11, 2007 by JThompson

[raz-0]

Good for what?

I haven't been scanner shopping for a couple of years, but bang for the buck, the epson perfection series were pretty solid.

Scanners aren't a terribly competitive market these days, and what competition exists is for the low end market.

I'm on my 5th scanner in about 11 years. Based on work, school and friends, I've had direct experience with UMAX, microtek, HP, epson, canon and mustek.

-UMAX was good bang for the buck, but half-assed drivers, and is gone.

-Mustek always sucked IMO bad QC, dynamic range, driver, etc.

-HP is a scanner built like a printer. They are really targeted at SOHO office tasks.

-Microtek is passable, but I don't really like them.

-Cannon is similar to epson these days, but in my experience, they tweak the colors too much in the driver to make things look vibrant.. kind of like the cameras. (IMO I scan something, I want it to be accurate, not to look pleasing.. pleasing is for whatever I'm using the scan in).

-epson takes good solid scans that caputre lots of detail and probably come closest to the dynamic range they promise. Their drivers tend to work, even if they are a little strange sometimes.

Basically scanner quality comes down to dynamic range and resolution. You want the highest hardware dpi you can afford, and the best dynamic range you can afford.

However, those basic nuggets of wisdom aside, unless you have a GOOD monitor (i.e. one of the handful guarnateed to display the full adobe RGB color gamut), a GOOD printer with a solid color profile, and a good calibration device to go with both, you aren't going to notice the difference between a decent consumer model and something that costs multiple kilo-bucks.

On top of that, even good scanners are built like crap and are fragile. Treat them as dispoable.

IMO, I won't drop real money on a scanner anymore as the market is driven by people scanning family photos rather than professionals when it comes to anything other than professional pre-press gear and bulk document scanning.

That being said, if I need it right, I'll pay a pre-rpess service to do it right with the right gear. This applies to print work, and will get me an image that will print with accurate colors.

For web, video, or 3d, I'd probably buy an epson 4990 at the $400 mark. As in my experience they have the best dynamic range and resolution of the consumer brands, and give you all you need to work with for even good monitors.

If I wasn't going to make a buck, I'd probably do the epson 4490 and get 90% of what I'd get out of the 4990 for half the price. If it was for pictures. If it was for a mix, I'd probably just dump $100-$200 on the HP all-in-ones you can buy at walmart etc. Tweak the scans in photoshop if they need to look prettier, and enjoy the labor savings of the nice OCR and direct to PDF with OCR that comes in the package that epson is a bit short on.

[JThompson]

If you want to know your monitor is right you need to calibrate it too. This is what I use.

http://www.northlight-images.co.uk/article...spyder2pro.html

This was scanned from an 8x10 print I shot of Petty from 2005 (Microtek i900)

Image removed

I would also give a thumbs up to Matt's choice as well. Mine has more bells and whistles, but can be a bit much for someone who isn't a geek like myself.

Edited May 11, 2007 by JThompson

[SiG Lady]

I've probably researched the Microtek i800 and i900 the most... even though consumer reviews (online) criticized how difficult it was to install and/or how equally difficult it was to fathom the software. Microtek claims to have higher-than-usual dynamic range, though. They also weigh about 25+ lbs. Hmm...

My chief tasks for a scanner include simple scans of misc imagery, flat art and fun stuff to include/distort/filter/add to design layouts; high-res scans of vintage photos for intense restorations; high-res scans of contemporary photos for reproduction or use in layered design layouts.

Love Tom Petty. Always have. NICE IMAGE!

My current scanner is a UMAX 1200s (ancient) and served me well for a reasonable amount of time... but not forever. It now sucks.

My photo processing lab of choice here in town uses an Epson Perfection D700 (could find no reference to it online anywhere) so it may be old... or not. I dunno. But they said they liked it--though I have no idea how much actual scanning they're doing with it. Not much, I suspect.

I have one more high-end photo processing house in town to ask about scanners, then I'm going to just go DO something. Like buy a scanner.

Thank you all for this valuable input. Really.

[JThompson]

My Pleasure.... I hope we were helpful.

I've shot Tom maybe 20 times over the years. He let's you shoot an entire show. Hell of a nice guy. Also, he doesn't rape the fans with high ticket prices. That image is one of my favs from the 8000 or so I have of him. To bad I can't shoot a gun as well as I do a photo.

Jim

[SiG Lady]

At the front end of my radio career I worked alongside a California record promotor (indy) who--among other acts--promoted Petty. Yes, he was a nice guy. A unique artist. A pleasure to promote.

This is a beat-up version of one of his early stickers. I have two cherry extras on hand. Also have a full bumper sticker from the "You're Gonna Get It" campaign.

[JThompson]

At the front end of my radio career I worked alongside a California record promotor (indy) who--among other acts--promoted Petty. Yes, he was a nice guy. A unique artist. A pleasure to promote.

This is a beat-up version of one of his early stickers. I have two cherry extras on hand. Also have a full bumper sticker from the "You're Gonna Get It" campaign.

That's cool... him and Fleetwood Mac are high on my list. I've got pictures with the guys from Fleetwood Mac. I shot them on the last tour. I was working for the band and got to meet them. Not always a given when working for a major act. That's the reason I picked up a camera in the beginning. It was the only way I could think to get to meet some of those people. After a while I learned that a lot of them were not worth meeting. It ruined some of my feeling for the music. Don Henley comes to mind. I used to love Eagles stuff and now I just think what a prick the guy is every time I hear a song from them.

Anyway,

Good luck on the scanner and be sure to let us know what you get and how it works out for you.

Best,

Jim

[Genghis]

I've owned a number of scanners, but their primary use has been OCR in a law office. Scanning photos is secondary. The worst one I've owned was a HP flatbed scanner. It would work for a while, then something would go wrong with the driver and it absolutely would not work. Reinstalling didn't help. I had to move it to another computer, then after a while it would screw that one up too.

By far the best bang for the buck is my Canon. Less than $100, several years old and still going strong. It used LED instead of a lightbulb. Never had any problems with it whatsoever.

[XRe]

By far the best bang for the buck is my Canon. Less than $100, several years old and still going strong. It used LED instead of a lightbulb. Never had any problems with it whatsoever.

I've got one of these, too - doesn't see much use, right now, but it still works fine. Should scan normal line art and such without issue. I scanned a couple of 8x10s, and the results were reasonable. Charlene, I can send you a high res file of one of the scans, if that would help you...

If I were scanning film, or high res photos or something, though, I'd be getting an Epson V700 or V750... Pricey, but as flatbeds go, they're about the best thing out there for photography work....

[SiG Lady]

AHA...!! I just called the photo lab and their Epson is NOT a "D700", it's the V700. Duh. I either mis-heard or someone there mis-spoke. Ah... that settles that issue. So, I've actually SEEN one (it's not too big) and they said they liked its scanning results. Cool. I'll put that on my "definitely take a second look" research list. There indeed are several references to it online. The V700 might be around $500-or-so from the looks of it.

Thank you for that suggestion.

[XRe]

Note, I should have said "best flatbed out there for photography work..."

If we could all have drum scanners....

[SiG Lady]

Ah, well, if I could afford a drum scanner I wouldn't be poking about the way I am.....

I just did some add'l research on the Epson V700/V750, and probably the V700 would be quite satisfactory. The difference between the two is negligible for my purposes, and the full version (withthe V750) of some accompanying software (vs. the Special Edition in the V700) is not too important. Photoshop CS/CS2 will be my main squeeze 'ware in manipulating and processing any resultant images anyway.

A reviewer who took an extensive look at this Epson product also did some side-by-side scans using the Canon CanoScan 9950E. Again, if one needs to split hairs, then one may want to assess these minute differences more deeply, but for my purposes, I imagine a high-end pro-sumer level scanner will be just fine.

[lynn jones]

hey sig lady,

i use hp scanjet for our business daily. no problem what so ever. the model # c7710a.

lynn

[SiG Lady]

HP tends to make better printers and scanners than computer systems--at least that's been my experience. I'm on my third HP printer and currently still have two. I've heard no particular complaints about HP scanners. It all depends on what you intend to do with the scanner.

This particular model (C7710a) specializes in document scanning with a document feeding feature that rolls sheets over the glass automatically. This is a modest-resolution scanner that is perfect for archiving office documents. There are several on eBay at the moment, as a matter of fact.

[Paul B]

I actually have 2 scanners attached to my computer.

One is in my all in one Lexmark printer which is not the highest quality, but is great for doing a lot of documents and combining them into one .pdf.

For photos and slides I've been using a Microtek Scanmaker 5900 for a few years now with very good results. It will scan up to 2400 dpi and will do 48 bit color. I really used it's capability when I scanned in some old 35mm slides and they came out very well - I thought this was an acid test.

Software has worked well with only minor problems (I never read the book). Comes with OCR.

I think I bought it new for less than $200.

[SiG Lady]

More and more late model scanners are including some sort of film-strip (negs) or slide (positives) scanning capabilities. It takes some particularly decent technology to scan slides and film WELL, but dedicated film scanners are out there for the buying, too.

Yes, scanning negs and/or slides IS the acid test. Or one of them, anyway.

Also, many scanners now come with embedded OCR capabilities.

It looks like the Microtek product and the Epson product BOTH have film-scanning features, which would be nice... as I have nearly 1,000 rolls of film over my 12+ years in the biz and there are some isolated images I'd like to digitize (by no means all 1,000 rolls, I assure you!). The film scanning feature would be a nice bonus.

[freeidaho]

The HP 4890 works great for me. I bought it origiinally to capture a lifetime of photos that my parents took. But it works for negatives and slides too.

kr

[3GunF1Guy]

Ignore almost all of the info that you get about scanners there is only one thing that matters when it comes to good scan quality and that is the Scan Density of the scanner. It is referred to as the D-max. A scanner with 3000 dpi and 16 million colors and a D-max of 3.0 will give really bad scans compared to a 600 dpi and 65000 color with a D-max of 4.0. D-max is the ability of the scanner to resolve the differences in color. It has nothing to do with number of colors the scanner will output (16 million, 65k, ect.) A low d-max scanner will not resolve the colors or the details in the shadows or make the black areas black or the white areas white. It is the d-max number that separated the flatbed scanners from the drum scanners. Most drum scanners have a d-max of 4.0 – 4.2. Five years ago the Agfa brand prepress flatbed scanners were in the 3.5 – 3.7 range and the Microtek, Umax scanners were in the 3.0 – 3.4 range. Today Epson claims their 4990 has a 4.0 d-max. That is an impressive number for a flatbed scanner, I don’t know if it will do it because we still scan on a drum scanner, but if it will, that is the scanner to get.

Scott

Btw, this is what I do all day at work. I own a print shop with offset presses and digital printing. I have seen good scans and bad scans. It is hard to tell people that their fancy 3000 dpi, 16 million color , $500, scanner made that bad scan when they scanned it at 3000 dpi and gave it to me to print and when we print it all of the detail in the shadows is not like their original.

[SiG Lady]

I believe that Epson claims a 4.0 d-max on that Model V700. That sounded pretty awesome to me. (Cost of that item is approx $500.) I appreciate your input--especially from someone "in the biz" who deals with it regularly... and deals with the challenges of "educating" your clients.