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What's the best way to get photos into a computer? Use a film scanner!
In the last year, computer prices have sunk faster than the Titanic, and that means it's a great time to invest in a digital darkroom (a high-speed computer with 32MB of RAM memory or more, a decent 17-inch or larger monitor, imaging software, and a photo-quality printer). But once you've shelled out a couple grand for your dream imaging system, how do you get pictures into the computer?
The easiest and fastest way is to shoot with a digital camera and download the resulting images directly onto your hard drive. But current megapixel-plus digital cameras cost about $1,000 (including extra memory cards and battery chargers) and barely provide enough detail for making Sx7-inch prints. Plus, digital cameras are virtually useless when it comes to converting shoe boxes full of slides, prints, and negatives into pixels. For these, you'll need either a film or flatbed scanner.
Flatbed scanners attach directly to your computer and can handle prints, flat art, small 3-D objects and, in some cases, film itself. Prices for photo-quality units start as low as $99, move up into the thousands for advanced models, and skyrocket into the tens of thousands for professional models. On the other hand, film scanners are designed primarily for film, both negative and slide. These start at around $400 for basic 35mm and APS units, and jump into the tens of thousands for high-end desktop models with medium-format capability. As we're about to explain, film scanners are our top choice for overall image quality and resolution, so we rounded up nine of the top contenders from $400 to $2,SOO and put them through a grueling PoP test. (Watch for a roundup of affordable flatbed scanners in a future issue.)
Flatbed vs. film scanners
Before we get to our test results, let's take a closer look at the differences between flatbed and film scanners and why we...