While others have given yo some very good answers, I would like to address three tangential issues that you hint at.
First, as for the advice of distributors and retailers, remember that they are selling products and seek to push customers toward the products that they have in stock and which furnish them with the highers profit margins. The may be the reason for your receiving contradictory advice from these sources. You should be well advised to take advice and suggestions from them - even the best of them - with some caution and a grain of salt. Second most if not all the glass carriers for the medium and better range film scanners are made of anti-newtonian glass or plastics; they usually are also scratch resistant but not unscratchable; and while they do require some additional maintenance in terms of keeping them dust free, it is not less than what one would encounter in a glass nagative holder for an enlarger, a camera lens, or a glass slide mount. It typically just is not that big of a task keeping the glass film holders clean as compared to the benefits that they provide when they are needed. Third, as for the questions you raise regarding dept of field and sharpness of the scans, the only way you can be certian that the quality meets YOUR criterion and needs is to take one of your negatives or transparencies and scan it using the different scanners outputting it to a removable media which you can then take to have the images printed for comparison. Since questions as to if there is enough depth of field or sharpness to compensate for less than flat negative or transparency handling is often a matter of personal and individual assessment, no one can answer the question for you in any definitive manner except yourself via testing. -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of David - Sent: Sunday, April 28, 2002 1:18 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [filmscanners] Advice Please I have worked as a freelance photographer for many years and am now looking to replace my b/w darkroom with a film scanner. I shoot medium format (t-max 100) film and the end use is for high qualiy glossy magazines and corporate publications, usually A4, very occasionally A3. The scanner would only be used for scanning b/w negs at this point. I am receiving conflicting advice from various suppliers as regards what to buy. Calumet, for example, tell me that the Nikon 8000ED would be more than adequate for the purpose, whereas Digital Workshop say that the Nikon would not be up to the job and I would need a Flextight III, at considerably more expense. So, first question; would the Nikon give me pin-sharp scans from b/w negs, suitable for high quality publication, at least to A4? Secondly, when the Nikon was demonstrated, the film was clearly not at all flat in the holder. They told me that the scanner had enough depth of focus to compensate for this. Is this true? They also said that, if it was a problem, a glass carrier was available, but I can forsee all kinds of problems with that, such as dust on the extra 4 surfaces, and newtons rings. Any advice welcome. _________________________________________________________________ Chat with friends online, try MSN Messenger: http://messenger.msn.com ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ------------ Unsubscribe by mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], with 'unsubscribe filmscanners' or 'unsubscribe filmscanners_digest' (as appropriate) in the message title or body ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Unsubscribe by mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], with 'unsubscribe filmscanners' or 'unsubscribe filmscanners_digest' (as appropriate) in the message title or body