I wish to store, catalogue, and even enhanse my thousands of photos 35mm slides, color and mono prints, on my computer. Ideally the ability to work with negatives would be great. The HP Photosmart 20 seems ideal for much of my intended work. HP also offers a flat bed scanner, HP 6350C, with photo and slide (I am not sure about negatives) copying capabilities that seem to cover much of my needs, and has capabilities that the Photosmart does not. Any ideas on the relative merits, especially considering that the Photosmart is a single use machine and the 6350C has so many more uses? The limited format of the Photosmart against the ability to handle very large prints and other material on the 6350 is also a consideration.

-- Vern Matheuszik (matheuszik@securenet.net), December 21, 1999

Answers

The hp6350, if it is anything like the 6200 will not do a good job on slides and negatives. the photosmart scanner will beat it hands down. the photosmart scanner will also do prints to 5X7. If you want to do other reflective images, get a cheap flatbed. for slides and negatives a minimum of 2400 dpi optical resolution is essential. You can also get a third party scanner driver from ed hamrick (www.hamrick.com) that will allow you to save your images in 16 bit tif files. These will give you greater shadow detail when you correct your images

-- Jonathan Ratzlaff (jonathanr@clrtech.bc.ca), December 23, 1999.