Scanning Xpan without stitching

Hello all, this question has been asked and answered before, but the last time

was a year ago. I am hoping things have changed in the meantime. What I

would like to know is this, is there a film scanner out there less than $1,000

that can scan a full Xpan panorama negative without having to "stitch" two

halves together? I know the Minolta Multi Pro and Nikon 8000 will do this, but

these are far too expensive for me. What I am looking for is a 35mm scanner

that will "go wide." Any help or advice will be much appreciated.

Thanks,

Bill

The Hewlett-Packard Photosmart S20 does the job well. The Epson 2450, reviewed on <A HREF="http://www.normankoren.com/Tutorials/Epson_flatbeds.html">http://www.normankoren.com/Tutorials/Epson_flatbeds.html</A> also does it, but it isn't optimally sharp. Epson has come out with a replacement in Japan, called (over there) the GT-9800F. It will scan at 3200 dpi and may have a superior optical system to the 2450-- it seems to have a nice 6-element lens. It won't be available for a while. Price translates to $425 US. Not bad.

Nothing that will give you good quality ... Stitching isn't hard and gives very good results.

Adobe's Photoshop Elements has a Photemerge function which I think is

unavailable even in full Photoshop. Photomerge makes stitching quite painless

and does all the work of blending the seam for you. It has a lot of controls

meant to help in stitching multiple shots taken while turning a regular

camera, but you don't even need these with an XPan shot. It's cheap, too. Only

about $100 I think. If you already have a good 35mm scanner, it's the cheapest

solution.

I might be missing something, but IMO the ability to scan more than the width of a regular 35 mm negs comes from the scanning software. A lot of relatively cheap film scanners are marketed as consumer products: The bundled software is very limited, when it doesn't simply sucks. If you use get such a scanner, using something like vuescan should solve your problem.