Questions about scanners:

1. Which of the next tow scanners is preferable, in consider to several of Aspects like - reliability, scan-quality, possibilities and ease of scanning of Photos, films / negatives, slides and other: -hp scanjet 5300c -Epson perfection 1200U 2. What are the maine aspects to take in consideration While going to buy a scanner (SOHO user) ?

Thanking you in anticipation! eitos

-- eitos levitinos (eitlevit@benarit.com), July 10, 2000

Answers

It really depends on what level of quality your happy with, they will not perform at the level of dedicated film scanners but they will do a reasonable job for the money. You should be able to get quite acceptable quality scans off prints, its just that 1200ppi is not enough to really scan film at a reasonable quality level. If you scan higher than 1200, your just interpolating which is nonsense. Neither scanner has the required dynamic ranges to capture high quality images off transparencies so like I said, you can make smaller prints or put stuff on the web, just don't expect great 8x10's off your slides. I'd give the nod to Epson since they list their Dmax as 3.0 and HP never lists their Dmax on any products, usually because its below average. The HP is easy to use (as is the Epson) but Epson builds better scanners at every price level.

-- Cris Daniels (danfla@gte.net), July 11, 2000.