Scanner Suggestions and Recommendations

[Nifty]

Hey Friends,

I'm curious what scanners you all are using. I'm also wondering what you recommend for cheap, mid-level, and high range scanners.

My first scanner, years ago, was a very thin Canon. It wasn't very fast at all and the scans were okay.

I've had a few between then and now including a Memorex (cheap and not very good) and a Visioneer. I currently have a visioneer OneTouch 7100 which does an okay job. I don't scan enough to be too picky, but sometime I have to determine if it's poor scanning is a software, driver, or hardware related.

I look forward to your posts!

 

[Mark]

Rob,

I have found the successors to your old canon to be very satisfactory and with greatly improved speed. No power cord needed; everything comes straight off the USB. Its very light & compact, making it a great companion device for a notebook for portability. More good news...the price has gone down, you can often catch these for about $50. I also have an HP that has the capability to do negatives, slides and longer paper, but unless I need one of those features I find myself using the Canon - quick uncomplicated calibration. There are probably better devices out there, but I'm sure you'd pay much more for slight differences. I often scan dozens of photos at 300 dpi for slideshow presentation using a projector & large screen & find the results absolutely satisfactory.

I noticed last week one of the clear panel scanners on sale for a rediculously low price ($30?)....I wonder what sort of results those produce?

Regards to Everyone,
Mark

 

[drc023]

My current scanner is an Epson 1660 that I got a few years ago. I've owned a bunch of scanners - A couple of Microteks (good products), HP (decent), Plustek (no way), a $4000.00 (rebadged UMAX) piece of @#%$ at my first print shop and a couple of DFI hand scanners. The Epson isn't a new one by today's standards, but it's fast and does a great job. I wish I'd had it while owning my print shops. It cost about $150 at Office Depot and it wasn't even on sale, so I know it would have been less if I'd shopped around. I haven't been following the scanner forums lately, but if I was in the market for a new scanner, I'd limit my choices to Epson or Canon. FWIW, anyone using a scanner would benefit from Wayne Fulton's website: www.scantips.com.

 

[Nifty]

Great stuff... thanks guys! I'm not in the market for a scanner right now, but I like to keep up on stuff and felt that a scanner topic would be a good addition to the forum.

On second thought, maybe one of those cool clear panels...........

 

[fotofreek]

Good suggestion, drc, on the scantips link. I started out with the first visioneer which I used almost entirely for OCR scanning of leases and other documents that I wanted to edit. When I upgraded from Win98 there was no upgraded driver so I bought an Epson 3170 which had just come out. It was a cheaper version of the 3200, both with 3200 dpi resolution (not interpolated if I'm not mistaken). I have all of my parents (now departed) photos and all of their B&W negatives which I can scan with the transparency scanner. It will take 35 mm and 2 1/4 wide film strips. It does a great job on the 2 1/4 B%W negs, but 35 mm slides and color negs are better done with a dedicated slide/film scanner with higher resolution and ICE technology. BTW, I have a very large collection of family and travel 35 mm slides from almost 50 years of my own photography and I occasionally want to print from a color slide. I set up my digital camera to copy slides and get better, faster results than I do from my scanner. Simple to do and I can do a post or email about it if anyone is interested.

 

[Nifty]

fotofreek, your post reminded me of something.

My neighbor and I were talking about his dad, who I knew when I was 10 years old. He use to give me scrap wood to fiddle with, a super nice man who passed away about 12 years ago. I couldn't really remember what he looked like so I asked if he had a photo of his dad. He brought out a 5x7 print and I was going to take it out of the frame and scan it. I thought to myself, "I don't need a perfect scan of this, just something to remember him by." I went inside and grabbed my digital camera and took a quick shot of the picture. It turned out pretty well and was MUCH easier and faster than taking it out of the frame, turning on my scanner, waiting for it to warm up the lamp, etc.

 

[fotofreek]

Biggest problem would be light reflection off the glass, but that was a great way to get a quick, more than adequate print. Aren't these digital cameras great! My darkroom equiptment has been gathering dust for years. About the 35 mm slide/print technique, I read about a device someone had made and sold for this purpose. He said, on his web site, that a slide scanner is, in fact, little more than a single purpose digital camera in a single purpose case, with a light source, and a camera could do the same job with his simple setup. I just jerryrigged something like his gadget. Dedicated slide scanners with ICE do a better job as they eliminate most of the dust and surface artifacts that taking a digital image wont do.

 

[plevyadophy]

A website that you may all find very useful, in fact brilliant, for general advice on scanning with good tutorials is a site called Scantips.

Have a good look around and let us all know what you think of it.

The site can be found here: http://www.scantips.com

I think you will pretty much find everything you need there.

Good luck.


Oops!!!

I have just realised, the Scantips site has already been mentioned.

Anyway, I have one of them thin, light Canon scanners that are powered entirely by the USB cable. It's the CanoScan N760U. It's selling now for around 15 and the current version, if my memory is correct, doesn't cost much more than 40.

I have noticed that the websit for Qimage and Profile Prism (http://www.ddisoftware.com) recommends VueScan for scanning software. In it's list of compatible scanners, VueScan lists my scanner as a compatible scanner. So I guess that means that my scanner isn't that bad a product.


Hope my input has been useful.


.
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[Craig Ross]

scanners huh
A subject dear to my heart since I spend the the bulk of my day doing this for clients.
about 6 years ago we installed a Kodak picture scan to cd system being trialled here by Kodak before world wide release(Australia often gets used as a test market before final releases) it consisted of a computer with
a HP 5P print scanner and a modified auto document feeder along with Kodak software to generate
picture cd's , this worked very well until film scanners came along and replaced the print scanner,
but I still have the 5p they are great scanners very fast, sharp and simple to use I bought a second one
on ebay for about $50.00 they are scsi driven but very reliable and can scan to oversize A4, very handy.
but for negatives and slides you really can,t beat a dedicated film scanner I think Nikon film scanners
are probably the most overpriced,slowest and worst quality of all,some of the newer Canon and Epson
scanners with film scanning options are much better, Microtek also make a decent scanner ,I use one
for large format neg scanning, a bit slow though.
trust me I,ve used them all. my current film scanner is a Sony Uy-90, can scan a roll of 36 exp film at 2000x 3000
pixels in about 3 mins, but then it is horses for courses.

 

[panos]

I've had a 5p scanner and I don't think I agree with your point. Yes, it is SCSI driven. Thats a vice, not a virtue! USB and especially USB2 is much better for a scanner than SCSI. The 5p drivers for its own SCSI card are very hard to find (I still have them I think). Scans were not very clear; its lamp lacked "punch". The old DeskScan II software did a great job, but I doubt it works on XP...

SCSI is dead, lets face it.