I am intrested in purchasing a negative scanner. Does any one have any prefrences or recomdations? I've used one or two, but they were a couple years old. Has the technology improved or is it a safe bet to purchase an older model?

-- Alex Crick (alex@crick.com), September 26, 1997

Answers

scanners

I have used several brands. I would consider the extent of your output possibilties. You may want to make sure you get a scaner with enought bit depth (at least 24 bit). I have used a Leaf 35 scanner (40 bit/slowish/old tech/high quality), the Nikon coolscan ls1000 (36 bit/very fast/very sharp/reliable), the polaroid scanner (lower cost, good to excellent quality if you get the middle or higher grade model). If you scan in these images using a program such as Adobe Photoshop 4.0, plan on needing at least 40 mg of ram. On the quadra 950 I use at work, we have 160 mg of ram. There is a theory that you should have at least twice the ram per you largest file size. We have more mainly because we can have as many as 3 to 4 ram hungry programs open at once. You may get by with 40. Some programs (micrografx Picture Publisher) don't seem to need as much ram, but some of the tools require a little more care to use well. If you are thinking also of a flat bed, I have used a umax scanner with tremendous results. Their scanning plugins interface is wonderful.

-- gary klein (gklein@excel.net), October 09, 1997.