One of the key questions that has not yet been addressed is how much
does one wish to spend for a scanner, software and the printer to
print the final images. Each of these can be less or greater in cost.
As one of thoes who only affords the 'lower' end of the costs as I do
not use digital that much yet, I have an Epson 1280 with the film
scanner attachment. I use mostly the provided software and the Epson
C80 printer. I also use a Sony digital camera that I purchased in the
spring. I use a Mac and generally OS9.2 as I am more at home with it
than OSX which I also have.
The Epson scanner has proved to be a very good investment for me as I
am able to easily scan both prints and film. The colour quality is
excellent but does require a bit of tuning . DPI and the number of
pixels are a bit of a myth as they are only important insofar as what
your final image will be. Are you scanning for your web presentation
or hoping to do an 11"x14" print? I get very good images to the
8"x10" size from 35mm film scanned directly through to print. Those
that come via my digital camera are also very good. Both are superior
to what I would get from any 1hour photo service. When I scan to
include images in papers I get excellent results. The point being I
get the results I want for the needs I am applying. I would not
attempt to challenge the high quality imagery I can get from my
darkroom.. maybe I am not skilled enough.
I will also say that the equipment that I currently have has
limitations but it still can do a lot of things that I am yet to
attempt so it will serve me well for a while yet. If I wish to
produce that gallery level image from a slide I will take it to a
professional finisher who has the high end film and drum scanners
necessary, the software and primnters to get that level of quality.
I have only limited experience with film scanners, which do produce a
much more detailed (read much larger) image file but my printer can
only resolve to a specific level so the extra detail is unused. This
is the key next step. If you spend $1000's on the scanner its all
lost if you do not have the other end to maximize the the image
quality in production.
It is also important to understand that DPI (dots per inch) at a
printer is not the same as the digital resolution at the scanner,
which is measured in pixels. They relate but not directly.
Bob
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