Our company Dell laptops have been virtually trouble free, and that's quite a few so it's not a bad sample. Maybe 100 machines or so.

I use a Toshiba, quite compact but not a great screen.

Sue uses a Sont Viao, nice slick white case but a bit larger.

I wouyld suggest going for the spec you need and then choosing a make that seems well made. Something recognisable.

My son Mike is an architect and he uses Macs for preference when working or for home use. The way they work is simpler, faster, more reliable and not prone to attack from viruses.

I work on PCs and have had a wider range of programs available, that I don't want anyway, but PCs are more universally used. I have to be very careful to protect against viruses.

You can run Windows on a Mac if you want to, so there is quite a good case for using them, certainly for imaging.

However, I'm sticking with PCs simply because we use so many of them and starting to replace with macs would be quite an thing to do.

Hi Tracey, and welcome!

Well if I had a camera advertised as being able to be dropped onto a concrete floor from 10m and survive, I don't think I'd test that out until necessary...

But it is good to know that Pentax cameras can sing in the shower, or perhaps someone else was in there with it...

You feed in a strip and if you use the motorised feed you still have to scan one at a time. If you use the manual feed you have to carefully mount the strip for every scan. The process is incredibly slow and excruciatingly slow if done with care to a higher standard.

We rarely scan these days - only if something special has to be resurrected from our film past.

Although you say you don't mind the time Chris, I wonder if it might not get a bit tedious anyway after a few nights spent doing a film a night?

When I did the PU article on Images of England I had to scan negatives and it was a real pain to do 20 or so shots. After that it was back to digital and it was a real relief to not have to look at scanning again.

We use a Coolscan IV, almost identical apart from the resolution, and scanning 4000 negatives will take an eternity. Ther's no easy way to do this and i wouldn't even try.

How about just looking at the negs and scanning any you take a fancy to, one film at a time when you have a moment?

I'm not sure how this is going to work. When you get your images out of the scanner and into the computer, you will then just have to process them through Photoshop in exactly the same way as your digital images. How will shooting on film make the images better?

I really think it's much easier to use a digital camera for this, and I mention it because I'm pretty sure you will end up disappointed in your scanner if this is the only purpose you are buying it for.

I like the light and mood of this image. You've done better than I ever have at this location - it's always dull and wet when I'm there.

I would like to see a level horizon.

Welcome, Steve, let's see some of those images!

Yes, you can make adjustments to the RAW file in the RAW Converter, but when you've finished this initial adjustment you save as a JPEG or TIFF ready for further processing in Photoshop.

Although you can compensate for errors in exposure, it's always better to get it right in camera if you can. Bracketing exposures is a fast and simple way of doing this.