I am looking for a reasonable priced scanner to scan negatives right into my computer. I has an 8600/200 Power Mac. I have a umax S-12 flat bed scanner. I am a photography student. I am also looking for a reasonable writable CD Drive. All suggestions welco

-- JoMarie Smith (LiteQuiet@aol.com), February 27, 1999

Answers

I have a Nikon Coolscan LS20 - it is the 'budget' Nikon negative scanner. It scans 35mm negatives and slides at up to 2700dpi. It cost me about $1100 Australian - so its probably significantly cheaper in the US.

It's a very good scanner.

The only problem with it is that it is 24 bits (8 bits per channel). I think the newer budget scanners are 30 bits - the full priced scanners are 36 bits.

Of course, it doesn't do medium format.

Regards Gareth Jolly

-- Gareth Jolly (sgfj@minters.com.au), February 28, 1999.

I just got a Lacie 4x8x External CDR with Panasonic mechanism last week and am very impressed. It came with a good quality SCSI cable and Toast software for recording CDs, all for less than $300. It's a bit noisy, but I have it under my desk on top of the computer (Power Mac G3) so that isn't such a problem. The noise would be more annoying at home than at work as it is fairly chaotic here during the day.

The scanner question is a bit tougher to answer, as the quality varies wildly and is directly proportional to price. If you just want something to get images into your Mac so you can catalog them and make low-res prints the Nikon mentioned in the first repsonse is a good choice. Unfortunately, the professional quality scanners start on the far side of $15,000 and go up rapidly, putting them out of reach for most of us, especially those on student budgets. If you are after professional quality results, take your best images to a service bureau for drum scanning.

-- Darron Spohn (dspohn@clicknet.com), March 01, 1999.

All depends!, if you4ll use the scans to print them or to a web use. My honest advice is that you consider the Minolta QuickScan 35 option. Why? Well, all the people is talking about Nikon scanners, cameras, lenses etc. I think, why they don4t look at Minolta products?, why Nikon don4t have light meters, color meters, and other kind of measurement systems. because they don4t have the expertise of Minolta. Take a look at the Minolta.com page. Good luck

-- Carlos Stollmann (slidemann@hotmail.com), June 20, 1999.

I just got a Minolta Dual Scan, for $307.00. I must say I was pleasantly surprised at the quality. May be you shoul keep on eye on uBid, they have refurbished units for sale from time to time. Francis Laping

-- Francis Laping (flaping@fast.net), August 20, 1999.