Best 6400dpi flatbed scanner for old album photos

Our family wants to go through our albums and digitize a few hundred photos in order to create digital presentations,

establish a more permanent photographic record, and make archival prints.

 

We would appreciate suggestions on what might be the best high-resolution flatbed scanner with an LED light source

to buy. We are interested in high quality scanning of photographic prints, and not transparencies.

 

The unit could be linked to either a Windows machine or a Mac Pro, both of which have Adobe CS3 installed.

Suggestions on which platform to use for this project would also be welcomed.

 

Thanks for any assistance.

You won't find a flatbed with uninterpolated 6400 ppi in anything less than a Scitex, which start at about $18,000 ($12K rebuilt). The best Epson (V750) has an optical resolution of 4800 ppi which is actually closer to 2400 ppi due to design limitations. Fortunately you don't need anything close to this resolution to scan printed photographs - 600 ppi is all you need with a comfortable margin.

 

Just about any color flatbed is good enough in the resolution department, and differ mainly in the software and scanning speed. If you scan color, it helps to calibrate the scanner. Silverfast AI-6 software is the best, and comes with IT-8 calibration targets and tools. It only costs about $120 for a low-end flatbed, and is worth every nickel in the headaches you will be spared. I have an Epson 2450 which does an admirable job scanning prints, and is available used for about $50.

Scanning prints with a flatbed, you don't gain much beyond 300 dpi for regular snapshots, and 600 dpi for a higher quality print: something like a contact print from medium format. Most any $100 flatbed will do. Get one of the common brands, and check if it's supported by Vuescan (it likely is), as you might want to try that out, well worth it.

I agree with the other posters about not needing more than 600 ppi for scanning photographic prints.

 

"The best Epson (V750) has an optical resolution of 4800 ppi which is actually closer to 2400 ppi due to design limitations."

 

The Epson V750 does have a true optical resolution of 6400 ppi. It actually uses a dual lens system, one lens with a max

optical resolution of 4800 ppi and the high rez lens that is 6400 ppi.

I've not seen any users or tests claiming V750 (or Microtek M1) even approached detail resolution of Nikon's 4000ppi setting. The claimed resolution of any scanner are pretty much irrelevant. The question is, how does it relate to Nikon, the desktop benchmark.

 

Links would be good.

just some sense of what you are asking for:

 

At 6400ppi a 4x6 print would generate a 25,600 x 38,400 pixel scan: large enough to make a print that is a bit over 85 x 128 inch print at 300dpi.

 

is that really your goal?

 

Yo uasked about a scanner for documents that uses LED light sources ( LED lights save a huge amount of time in bulb warm up over scanners with fluorescent sources ). I use a Canon CanoScan 5600F scan quality for printed material, I haven't tried film yet) is in the same class as the Epson V750M and Microtek M1 and is a fraction ofthe cost of either.