Scanners

[sandman]

It looks like it is time for me to hunt for a new scanner. Tried to use my hp 6300 flatbed today and it started to smell like it was burning up. I unplugged it and waited and plugged it back in again, and the motor made a grinding noise and the scan lite was on but the bar moved jerky and to the bottom and stopped . It did not sound right.
My question for all of you is this: Should I stay with HP or try an Epson. I do some professional photography and I have liked the results with my older hp. I have not tried to scan any tranparensies or negs but a lot of the new units do this. I saw an hp that will scan in 4x6 prints automatically.
I will look forward to the Pilot experts experience with the newer units on the market. My old one was about 5-6 years old.
Thanks for any comments at all-
Regards,
Bob
l

[PaulV7]

Any of the brands produce good pictures. Personally I lean more towards HP and Canon. You can't really go wrong with any high quality flatbed.

As for the negative scanners that is a different story. My wife and I looked into getting one last year. She does a lot of photography so we wanted a nice scanner. After talking to a bunch of people and looking on the net we found most flatbed/negative scanner combos aren't very good for negatives. They apparently don't scan well and add alot of artificial grain. Maybe new models have gotten better I don't know.

My advise would be get a good flatbed scanner then look into a separate film/negative scanner. It will cost more but I think you would be much happier with the results of your scans. Specialy if you do professional photography and need crystal clear scans.

[kadiir]

I concur with PaulV7 on the separate negative scanner - you won't be happy with the results of an adapter on a regular scanner.

As far as brands, I'm partial to Epsons. I like them a lot more than HPs. I have not used a Canon.

kad

[sandman]

Just another thought to ponder,
what about the all in one scanners, printers, fax machines??
My printer is about the same age as my dead scanner so what do you think about the allinones?
Bob

[jay]

Originally posted by sandman
Just another thought to ponder,
what about the all in one scanners, printers, fax machines??
My printer is about the same age as my dead scanner so what do you think about the allinones?
Bob

I just installed an HP PSC 1350, and it works well.

[PaulV7]

Originally posted by sandman
Just another thought to ponder,
what about the all in one scanners, printers, fax machines??
My printer is about the same age as my dead scanner so what do you think about the allinones?
Bob

Some of the all in ones are good. I haven't ever spent much time looking at them because I never really needed one. Of those I like the design lexmark started. With the flatbed scanner on top and the printer below. If you were going to go that route I would try to get a pretty high-end one. Since it will be both your scanner and printer. Another nice feature alot of those have it the ability to act as a copier w/o using the computer. It would be nice to be able to make a quick copy of something like that. My HP scanner says it can send things straight to my printer but I have never gotten it to actually do it.

The thing I found useful when I was looking for a new printer was I went to Canon, HP, Epson, Lexmark websites and printed off their "compare product pages" So I had all of their machines set right out in front of me. Then I started crossing them out until I got down to a few that I liked that I did more research on those models.

[PSUPilot]

Originally posted by sandman
Just another thought to ponder,
what about the all in one scanners, printers, fax machines??
My printer is about the same age as my dead scanner so what do you think about the allinones?
Bob

We have the Epson CX5200 (I think that is the model number). Got it this summer and it works great: scanning, copying, photo printing, plus there is only one machine taking up precious desk space.