Best Scanner?
 

I am in need of purchasing a scanner for the doc I am shooting. I need to scan dozens of news articles and pictures for a film shoot on an XL1 in non-frame, NTSC, 60i (I know, I know) which I intend to eventually transfer to film for projection.

Can anyone suggest a good scanner for this purpose and what scaning file size is appropriate?

Many thanks.

Jim: While I can't recommend a good scanner (I use a nice - but slow - HP scanner), I can give you this tip:

The scanning resolution depends on what you're gonna do with the images. If you plan on doing some slow zooms and such, where the image gets blown up, then scan those images at a higher resolution. Don't downsize them to 720x480 and then use them, but import them into your NLE at full resolution. They'll look nice and sharp.

If the photos are going to be dropped down to DV resolution eventually, you really don't need a good scanner. DV is so low-res there is no need for a fancy shmancy scanner. Unless of course you need it for other purposes.

So what is a good res to acquire the images? I am looking at scanners and, of course, the higher the res the more $$$. If going to film does it matter if the original is on DV?

I usually capture images at around double the resolution of DV, obviously depending on the proportions of the image. Any scanner out there should be able to handle that.

I am not sure I understand your last question though.

I'm not sure I understand it either :-).

What I'm trying to say is that I am shooting all my original footage on DV. In editing, I will add the photgraphs and newspaper clippings scanned from original materials. All of this will eventually be tranferred somewhere along the line to film for theatrical distribution.

Does the transfer to film in post production matter in the resolution of these scans?

Nope. :-)

Unless you are posting on a high res system.

Thanks. That is what I didn't get.

So what res of scanner should I be looking at for purchase? I owuld think that the Epson 3170 with 3200 x 6400 should be more than enough.

Anyone know of a spec that indicates the scanning speed of these machines?? I know someone mentioned speed as a plus if a lot of documents need to be scanned.

I've got a Canon 9900F and I'm really dissapointed with it. It does ok with tranny but with neg film it totally sucks, can't reproduce colours accurately. I don't think it's the hardware but the totally inadaequate Canon ScanGear that comes with it. For Canon's top of the line flatbed scanner that is supposed to be able to handle both film and flatbed material it's pretty poor. I really wish I had bought a dedicated film scanner instead but I need to be able to scan both.

DV has a fixed size of 720x480 pixels. A 6x4" print only needs to be scanned at 120 dpi to create a 720x480-pixel image and fill the screen (6 inches at 120 pixels per inch equals 720 pixels). If you want to zoom in on the image x2, you would scan it at 240 dpi and so forth. In any event, for DV, you probably wouldn't need a scanner with more than 600x1200 optical dpi (ignore interpolated dpi specs). You can buy a 1200x2400 for less than $100. I'm pretty sure that 3200x6400 would be overkill unless you're scanning transparencies.

I just saw a new Microtek that incorporates Digital ICE for only $150, which strikes me as a bargain. ICE is a hardware-based image correction technology developed by Kodak that is said to be very effective. Using the ICE option could save you a lot of time on image editing (ICE does require longer scan times, however). And the optical resolution is 3200x6400, so even if you didn't use the ICE option and did your corrections by hand, it would be a good deal.