I am a serious amateur photographer that has begun diving into the digital world. I am looking for the right film scanner to produce nice B&W 5x7 and 8x10 prints. I know I don't need a high end model that is designed for speed, but I don't want an intro model that won't capture the detail that I'm looking for. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

-- R H (focus123@juno.com), July 20, 2000

Answers

There are a lot of very knowledgeable people here that can help you but we need more information. What format do you want to scan? What platform are you working from? What photo editor do you use or are you looking for a bundle also? What's your price range? It isn't the scanner that produces a print of a specific size. What kind of printer do you have?

A little more information and we can help.

-- Gene (RNOGENO@softnet.com), July 20, 2000.

Check out my review of the Acer Scanwit 2720s film scanner. Same technical spec as the Canon 2710 at almost half the price!

Scanwit review

See what you think. It might just fit the bill.

-- "Photoscientia" (photoscientia@beeb.net), July 20, 2000.

Thanks for your quick response - It sounds like you can help.

Here's my plan: About 80% of my work is 35mm B&W that I process in home lab. 20% I shoot on my kodak dc290. I'd like to scan my 35 mm negs, edit them in Adobe Photoshop, then email the files to a digital lab who can print them on photo paper and mail them back to me.

Right now all my digital stays digital for use on web sites. And I use a CanoScan to get my standard prints to digital. My goal is to go from negs to prints without using a tradition photolab or spending a jillions dollars on a printer. I figured my best route is using the film scanner. But I'm also open to other suggestions.

Thanks a bunch.

Ray

-- RH (focus123@juno.com), July 21, 2000.

For the near future, scanning is still the most economical route to quality digital. With good quality desktop filmscanners coming in at 2/3rds the price of top-end consumer digicams, and giving you twice the resolution.

A 35mm SLR is also far more flexible than even so-called professional digital cameras. (And before you D1 owners start on me- can you get a lens that gives the equivalent of an 18mm wide-angle for the D1? No, I thought not. And all your lens abberations are multiplied by one and a half times, compared to 35mm.)

Unfortunately though, black and white has been left to rot by the printer manufacturers. Even the top end inkjets only really support B&W by printing it with colour inks, and then the tone shifts over time. E-mailing to a professional lab is an option, but not very practical I don't think. Colour scans come off the scanner at 27Megabytes, and B&W at 9Mb. Unless you're prepared for long upload times, the only other option is severe compression like JPEG, and then you'll lose half the quality from the scanner anyway. Ho, hum. Leaving your scans in the hands of a professional scanning house is another option, I suppose, but then you lose most of the control, and all of the fun.

I didn't intend for this to sound so negative (pardon the pun), but that's the way it is at the moment. All compromise I'm afraid.

-- Pete Andrews (p.l.andrews@bham.ac.uk), July 21, 2000.

Even in the high end models you are not going to get anything in the way of speed. I use three Kodak 3570 film scanners which run 35 up to 70mm. They're great scanners, but not speed demons. I'm really not familiar with consumer scanners, but I have heard good things about the Nikons and the Minoltas. If you are going to send an image to a lab then e-mail is definately the way to go. Send low resolution small images via e-mail to your friends for them to view on screen, but if you are sending an image to a lab then you need to ftp it to them. You should not have any problem with file size then, and 100meg+ files should be no problem. Whatever you do, do not remotely consider a flatbed scanner with film/transparency adapter for anything smaller than 4x5 film. You will get lousy scans, and you will never be happy. I use two Linocolor Saphirs for 4x5 film up and they do a good job, but any scan from a smaller film size is lousy.

-- fred (fdeaton@hiwaay.net), July 21, 2000.

screwed up that last one by leaving out a word---should have read that e-mail is definately NOT the way to transmit images to a lab-- Sorry about that--Often my fingers are a step or two behind my brain!

-- fred (fdeaton@hiwaay.net), July 21, 2000.

For Acer ScanWit 2720S, we, Acer Peripherals, America, run out of stocks in the second straight month. I need to apologize to all those customers, who are looking for Acer ScanWit, only find that they could not get it anyway online.

The next shippment for ScanWit will arrive in U.S.A. around 20s, August. If you want to get one of ScanWit, I could tell you where to get one, now, but we do not have any stocks in our Warehouse, again.

Sorry for all the problems, we have been caused you.

-- Edward Yang (edwardyang@apa.acer.com), August 03, 2000.