LARGE flatbed photo scanner?

[J.Emmett Turner]

I’m looking for recommendations on an oversized flatbed scanner. I know A3/wide format flatbeds exist but I was hoping for something even larger, like A2. I’ll happily accept SuperA3+ or Tabloid/A3 scanner recommendations too, since I can stitch multiple smaller scans and it would still save me a lot of work over a typical Letter/A4 flatbed photo scanner.

I see a lot of “book scanners” and such in the A2/A3 size range but I’m trying to scan large-format photographs that I could turn back around and print actual-size. It doesn’t sound like “book scanners” are optimal for this (mostly just text).

Thanks!

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

What's wrong with book scanners, there are not just for text, text needs quite some resolution as well, there are lots of images in books, even those several hundreds of years old. So it's more an issue of resolution you get with the sensor, there are wide differences from the low budget range of scanners to professional units for museums. Or you use your camera, if you have one in the upper pixel range and a suitable lens for that job.

 

[J.Emmett Turner]

Many of them are basically cameras on pedestals. For some, the resolution really only has to be good enough to get decent OCR and the color accuracy is not important. I’m going to be scanning and printing directly to A2 photo papers on a high end photo printer with minimal skills for touching up in GIMP or Photoshop, so having a good photo-quality source to begin with is important for me.

I’m not assuming that they are mutually exclusive. I wouldn’t avoid a book scanner that also touts photographic quality scans, it’s just that the pedestal kind are definitely inadequate and I’m not finding many flatbeds.

 

[The Hat]

and I’m not finding many flatbeds.

And you won’t, large anything are way out of your price range, even a drum scanner is expensive, @Ink stained Fingers mentioned a camera and that would be your best bet, because you don’t need huge PPI to print a Photo onto A2 sized Paper anyway..

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

or some unit like these, but you didn't mention any pricing idea yet

https://www.proscan.com.au/document-scanners/large-format-a2-a1-a0-scanners
https://www.plot-it.co.uk/p/contex_iq_flex_a2_flatbed_scanner
http://www.spigraph.com/Scanners/Catalogue-scanner/Flatbed/A2-Format/Image-Access/Widetek-25

and what's wrong with the photo quality of a camera ?