Photo scanners

Hi
Due to needing to make some copies of family photos, I am looking to purchase a photo scanner. I am, after a quick google, considering Epson v500 v600 or perhaps a Canon 9000f. Copies of prints are my main concern at the moment though slide or neg scanning would ofcourse be nice. Has anyone got any advice for me?

Many thanks mm

I have the Canon 700f which is great as it is very slim and will stand upright on its edge to reduce the amount of space it takes up. It also came with a flim/slide attachment which I have not used yet.
Overall I would say the canon is great scans are fast the colour rendition seems good to my eyes I would recommend it.

I have gone down the route of a dedicated negative / slide scanner, but before making that decision I did also look at flatbed scanners and reached no conclusion on which one of those I might buy, since there seemed to be good and bad reviews on all of them.

Your main focus should be to the resolution each scanner offers. If, for example, a particular machine scans at 1024 x 768 d.p.i. and another machine scans at perhaps 4000 x 3000 d.p.i. then the latter machine should (in theory anyway) offer better quality from the scans. Obviously, the higher the d.p.i. the bigger the image file - for example, the 1024 x 768 might be 2.5Mb in size whereas the 4000 x 3000 is more likely to be close to at least 10Mb.

I use a HP G2710 A4 flatbed scanner, which handles old pics very well.
The "lid" has slot into which a strip of 35mm negatives/or 2 mounted slides can be loaded, which can be a little bit fiddly (might be because I have fingers like Popeye). Larger negs (120) would be placed on the bed

From then on the accompanying software handles the rest. Scanning resolution is from 75 to 1200dpi which I find more than adequate for old pics (my ancesters seemed to have nothing but dogeared 2.5 x 3.5 in B&W prints followed by "Boots" 6x4 colour snaps) which I've blown up to A4/sent to Australia as jpgs

I would consider a different model (some have facilities to load blocks of negs/slide into a dedicated frame, rather like a contact sheet, if I were doing masses of slides/negs


There are/were numerous variations out there, so like Hyram says there are good and bad reviews. Consider also that a large number of printers are combination devices that often include a flatbed scanner.


regards
Bernard

Second hand Minolta Dimage film scanner, superb professional results.

I've been using my Canon MP980 all-in-one to digitise/copy photos, 35mm slides and negatives with remarkably satisfying, to me anyway, results.

For the slide/negatives you do need high resolutions to get usable results. The Canon has optical 4800x9600 dpi max and is (IMO) just ok at 2400x2400 but much better at 4800x4800. Taking 24bit TIFFs of slides at that resolution gives me 80MB raw files to work with in post-processing.

Prints are much easier to scan, as lower resolutions will be fine.

The biggest problem is all the dust on the originals

I use a HP G4050. The results are very good, and you can also use it for film/slides.

Thanks All

I will try to digest all that you have told me and come to a decision.

Regards mm