Ah, my new iMac does NOT like my current scanner. Not at all. The software was always buggy, and the reviews complained about that, but stupid me, I got it anyway. (It should still work on the PC, but I want a scanner that is actually cross-platform.) This non-cross platform scanner is a UMAX Astra 2200.
So - any good recommendations for a scanner that has a decent transparency adapter (or built-in transparency scanner)? I am getting to be a bit picky with the transparency adapter - I don’t expect perfection, but I got one scanner that had an utterly USELESS transparency adapter. I don’t know why they even bothered. I want a scanner that will at least produce something that I can tinker with in Photoshop. (I have about a jillion slides I want to scan.)
My budget is small - $200 or under. Any advice on where I should look?
I always come here first for advice! The best place! Thanks so much.
(And please, no platform hijacks. I want it to be a cross-platform scanner.)
I don’t know much about scanners but I do know that I checked both ZDNet and CNet reviews before deciding on what scanner I should buy. Looks like HP and Cannon are in the lead right now.
As for transparency scanners, you might be in luck. I read this article: http://www.abstractconcreteworks.com/essays/scanning/scanning.html a while back when trying to find a low-cost solution for a friend. She said she tried it and even though it took a little tweaking, it worked great!
So you may want to take your $200 and get a really good scanner and then make your own slide adapter. Might be worth it.
I’ve never seen a slide scanner under $20k that did even a half-decent job. But then, I’m spoiled because I used to work in a shop with a $250k drum scanner and a “low end” Leaf scanner (only a mere $35k).My recommendation is that you send out slides for Kodak PhotoCD scanning. It’s very cheap (even available through WalMart!) very high rez, and the results are very good. But be sure not to get the cheapo digital photo format as pushed by Intel/MS, it is low rez (1024x768) and not the 2k*3k format in true Kodak PhotoCDs. And if you have even higher requirements, Kodak Pro PhotoCDs can go to really REALLY high rez, like 40mb and up, last time I checked, they sold for about $4 each. You can do a lot of $4 scans for the price of a slide attachment.
Anyway, for flatbed scanning, I know you’re going forward with MacOS X and that you’re using an iMac, so you really need a scanner with USB or Firewire connectivity. I’m having this exact problem with my old SCSI scanner (an Epson 636). SCSI is causing a bit of grief on the new OS, since SCSI drivers were only finalized in 10.1. You might want to investigate a new MacOS X scanner program called Vuescan, it has drivers for quite a few products, and there is active discussion of this program (and the merits of various scanners) in the Usenet newsgroup comp.periphs.scanners…
I’m looking for a new flatbed scanner myself, with requirements similar to yours, but so far I haven’t found anything I like. But I’ll poke around a bit and see what I can come up with. I’ve been kinda busy lately so prod me if I don’t get back to you in a few days.
