Scanner question

I will be doing alot of commercial advertising work along with some

portraiture and fine art. My questions is what are your suggestions

for a good scanner ($1000.00 budget) for doing both black and white

and transperancy scans of mostly 4x5 and 6x7 format. Thanx ahead of

time.....jason

For less than $1000 you might want to consider the Epson 2450 Photo scanner. You can get good quality 4x5 and medium format scans for about $400. If you need a quality printer, you could spend the remaining $600-$700 on the Epson 2000P or 2200.

Jason,<br>

there is a new flat scanner Epson 3200 which reaches the 4x5". Better definition, better softwares than the 2450.<br>

Hope this helps,<br>

JLL

for in-house work, we use an HP 7490C (about $850) which does a pretty good job. for commercial work, i always subcontract the scanning and have it prepared specifically for the printer/publishing output needed.

I'll second the Epson 2450 or 3200. Either will probably do a fine job of the majority of your work; the money you save can pay for drum scans for the rest (for a while anyway.)

You may want to consider either the Umax Powerlook series or the equivalent models from Microtek. Both are professional level in terms of build and optical quality and have a relatively high dynamic range. In either case I recommend alternative scanning software. Buy the scanner and compare demos. I got better results from my Powerlook with Viewscan than with one of the more expensive programs I demoed. However either was better than the Umax software. YMMV.

I don't know what to buy but I can tell you not to buy anything that says "Linoscan" on it. Mine has been nothing but problems from the first day I got it.

Check out the Microtek 8700, at around $800, it beats out anything I have had from Epson. Considering that in the first six months I had one Epson, the CCD had to be replaced three times for the same reason, the individual CCD's would fail one at a time, leaving red, green, or blue streaks down the image. Of course, I actually only had the scanner fixed twice the third time it needed it, I threw it out and bought the Microtek. Good luck,

 

 

Tom