Scanners - are the more expensive ones worth it?

[webkuh]

I want to buy a scanner that's capable of producing great results at scanning my girlfriendld transparencies of her childhood. Some of these are slides, some are old negatives.

I saw that MacUser gave 4.5 out of 5 for this scanner:

http://www.microtek.nl/Product.php?ThisPage=&Product=Detail&P_Id=88

Which costs about £150. Yet many of the other Microtek scanners cost a lot more (£800+). What will I loose if I go for this less expensive scanner? Will quality be reduced or is it just loss of speed as this one doen't have firewire connection?

Many thanks for any scanner advice.

 

[Corpus]

I want to buy a scanner that's capable of producing great results at scanning my girlfriendld transparencies of her childhood. Some of these are slides, some are old negatives.

I saw that MacUser gave 4.5 out of 5 for this scanner:

http://www.microtek.nl/Product.php?ThisPage=&Product=Detail&P_Id=88

Which costs about £150. Yet many of the other Microtek scanners cost a lot more (£800+). What will I loose if I go for this less expensive scanner? Will quality be reduced or is it just loss of speed as this one doen't have firewire connection?

Many thanks for any scanner advice.

The more expensive models will usually provide better quality and higher resolution. However, an £800 scanner is probably overkill unless you are working in photography all the time. Be aware that not all scanners can do transparencies or slides, and some can do them but need a separate attachment. Having said all that I should say that I have never done slides or negatives and since they are very small to begin with you will probably need to scan them at a pretty high resolution so that they will look ok when at a useable/printable size. If you are going to be using it for just slides and negatives you might want to visit a local photography studio or full service printing shop. they can produce some amazing results for relatively little money and you don't have to buy a £800 scanner. At the very least, if you are committed to buying one they may be able to offer advise.
Good luck.

 

[Arden]

Go for the £150 scanner. It will do exactly what you want it to without being overkill. It might not be as good for slides or negatives (for which you could get a separate film scanner), but you don't need a £800 scanner. Anything above 300 DPI for print scans is more than adequate for casual printing anyway.

One thing I've done is scanned prints at, oh, 600 DPI, touched them up a bit, burned them to a CD as JPG's, and taken them to Costco to have them print the pictures out like film pictures. You might be able to do something like this in the UK.