Hi there, I want to scan hundreds of negatives of pictures I took over the years and store them to CDROM (or DVD or whatever). I'm considering a high speed scanner to do this. Couple of questions.

1. The LS-2000 (about $1900) sounds like a good price performer to me. How does the Minolta compare (about $1300) quality wise?

2. Considering that I'll potentially need 3 different sizes of the pictures I'll scan (thumbnail, medium, large) but would like to scan all the negatives only once, is it possible to resize a very large picture (say 1280x1024 pix) and resize it to a thumbnail without too much distortion? If so, which software does this best?

3. Do those scanners (like the LS-2000) allow you to scan the 4 images of one strip all at once (without re-inserting it, like my current HP PhotoSmart forces me to do)? Specifying different file names for each picture of course? thanks a bunch! Denis

-- Denis Paul (denis@dazel.com), October 10, 1999

Answers

I'm planning on doing much the same as you want to do. I'm currently evaluating scanners, also. Right now, I'm leaning towards the HP PhotoSmart S20. It's much improved over your original PhotoSmart (see review at this website) and does multiple images in a single scan. The price is right for me, but it doesn't handle APS )(which I figure I may have in the future). The Minolta Scan Speed sounds pretty good, but street price goes up to about $850. For you, if you need multiple formats, the Minolta Scan Multi handles lots of them, but it's even more pricy (also see review at this website).

I look forward to reading more answers to your questions...

-- Jeff Wade (jeffw@us.ibm.com), November 15, 1999.