What do I need?

[spotix]

Howdy Friends. I'm going to make the leap and scan 35mm and 4X5 negs and chromes. I'd like to know what kind of scanner people use. My computer is a Mac G4 Panther 10.3.9 with Firewire. And what about DPI? I assume I'll be scanning prints as well. Any help will be appreciated. Thanks.

[waynecrider]

Spotix, it''s pretty analog around here, and we don't dicuss digi this or that usually, unless it's in the gray area of the alt forum. I'd suspect you'd get alot more answers if you went over to www.photo.net and read some of the threads there and maybe ask a question. Most here wet process prints and scan for display purposes only. If your looking to scan so that you can post your prints, or positives, you might get more feedback as long as you mention "I love analog" something about your darkroom, and about sharing film pictures you took. If it's about scanning to print digitally, your at the wrong place. Sorry.

[spotix]

I guess I failed to mention I want to scan my photos and negs for publication. Sorry about that. But, I suspect a lot of folks scan their work for a huge variety of reasons. That being said, I love my studio camera,a Sinar bare bones model (no digital back), Wisner field camera (no digital back), a variety of pinhole cameras which I made myself(not a battery connection on one of 'em). I love my silver based photography.

[David A. Goldfarb]

For publication you often don't need very large hi-res files, except to give the art director more cropping options. I've made a pretty good four-color postcard, for instance, for a gallery show from a dupe of a 5x7" transparency made with a copy stand, a light box, and a 3.3 Mpix digital camera (Coolpix 990).

If your largest negs and transparencies are 4x5", and this is for publication (as opposed to LightJet or inkjet printing), you can probably do fine with something like an Epson 4990 for medium and large format, and a dedicated 35mm scanner like the Konica-Minolta 5400 II.

[waynecrider]

I guess I failed to mention I want to scan my photos and negs for publication. Sorry about that. But, I suspect a lot of folks scan their work for a huge variety of reasons. That being said, I love my studio camera,a Sinar bare bones model (no digital back), Wisner field camera (no digital back), a variety of pinhole cameras which I made myself(not a battery connection on one of 'em). I love my silver based photography.

Well your in the right place and if I missed your welcoming thread I'm sorry. There's just been a some complaining recently about some digit heads coming here and not knowing our community, talking digital. I wanted to just give a handshake and not rant at ya.

I'm in the same spot as far as your are. My lab down here scans 35mm for $10 a roll (16-18 meg files) when processing and about $2.50 per individual slide or $26 a roll when processing. Anything in larger sizes is a $15 pro scan for a 36meg scan. (I'm sure there are cheaper, and maybe better places around.) The only reason I mention these numbers is so you have something to compare cost to. I determined that for the money I'll pay for the amount of scans I need, I may as well use their much better equipment, which is constantly being updated, then buy a small, medium and larger format capable scanner, although I would love something that could scan an 8x10 print tho. Also the scans are always real clean so I don't have alot of computer time fixing things, or learning new programs, which are constantly being updated to new versions available for sale; Translated, I'm spending even more money. Btw, if you've not noticed, the true cost to go digital is one of the things we talk about in comparsion to analog. Now I don't want to get away from your question, so will just mention that there's a pretty wide spectrum of what people are using, but to cover both small and large formats and do it right, you'll most likely will need two scanners, especially if your going to submit digital files. Just for showing images tho there's a variety of older and newer models that will suffice and all the little nuances of the models is usually talked about ad infinitum over at P-net and at some of the other more digital sites. I'm sure some will post to this thread, but also read about what others have experienced concerning their models in other forums.