I'm looking for advice and suggestions on a Scanner to buy. I've been using a public flatbed scanner on my Fiber prints, but they always look terrible to me.

I only need it to post things on the web, update my website, and post in the w/nw section of another popular forum.

I'm thinking maybe a negative scanner might give me better fidelity, and allow me to plan how I'm going to attack difficult prints in the darkroom.

I'm trying to keep under 250$.

Scanning prints would be a nice "feature", but I'm mostly just interested in getting the image to the screen -- and I don't care much how I do it (negative or print). (a good flatbed scanner that reproduces my prints with some semblence of accuracy might be prefered over the negative scanner, since I won't have to toy as much with the image to get it posted).

How do you guys scan things? I've seen plenty of nice print scans (I assume, considering the nature of this forum); any suggestions?

depends on what format you are using. If it's MF then somethng like a used Epson 2450 would do the trick. I use one for both MF and LF neg scanning with pretty good results. If I knew what the heck I was doing it could probably be better too. For 35mm neg scanning you could pick up a used Nikon LS-2000 for pretty cheap. Again an excellent scanner.

The 2540 also does a great job of scanning prints. I got my 2450 for $85CAD.

I mostly do 35mm . . . other than my Holgas and an occational 6x6 from a WWII era Rolleiflex. But 35mm is my primary concern.

For prints upto 8.5 x 11 the Epson 2450, 3200, etc.. are great scanners. Find a used one on ebay. You don't need the current state of the art for print scans.

Any Epson flatbed scanners and some Canon models would do the kind of job you're describing, up to A4 (210x297mm) size for prints. They are a little over 100 USD for the new ones, but might be chear by now as time passes so quickly in the digital market.

If you intend to buy a used one, just be careful about how it's been treated. Battered scanners will rather destroy your work than help to present it.

And one more thing, those flatbed scanners cannot really do a good job for neg scanning (to produce digital prints) because they do not focus the images as nearly sharp as the ones that are actually design to do the job. So, as the negs tend to curl while scanning, they even go further out of focus. And I've heard more complaints than compliments regarding this problem.

For 35mm film scanning, you need at least Nikon Coolscan V or something equivalent to beging with.

Would this be better discussed in the grey area ?

Would this be better discussed in the grey area ?

Seems to me possibly it would..

Dave