I am from the "old school" of photography where you devo the neg and print with an enlarger.I am now just starting to go digital and am not sure where to start. I mostly do landscapes with a 4x5 shooting chromes,b&w and color negs. What type of scanner should I get and what type of printer should I get? I want to be able to print at least 16x20's. Please help, give model #'s. Thanks.
P.S keep it simple.
How much do you want to spend, and how big of prints do you want to make? Do you prefer glossy print or matte ones? How much computer work are you willing to do? For example, will you learn Photoshop? ...
Just starting out and with the benifit of 40 years photography experiance, I would get either and Epson 700/750V scanner, or that new Microtec M1, and an Epson 3800 printer, but those Canon and or HP printers that do 17" would be good too. I would also have at my disposal Photoshop CS on up and/or Qimage. I personally have the 750V and 3800. There are better but the costs would be about five times as much for not that much better results. Just my 2c
Greg Lockrey
Wealth is a state of mind.
Money is just a tool.
Happiness is pedaling +25mph on a smooth road.
Get an Epson v750 flatbed scanner and an Epson 3800 inkjet printer.
And a bigger computer and a Wacom tablet and $1000 of ink and paper and a couple of back up hard drives and a .....
What Frank Petronio said.
Scanner - For 4x5 film you'll presumably be limited to a flat bed scanner so Epson 700/750 would be a good choice. 16x20 prints from this scanner are pushing it in terms of technical quality but probably will be o.k. depending on your personal standards for quality. You might do what many people do and save the 16x20 prints for your best photographs and then get a drum scan from a good lab for these. But only you can tell what meets your standards of technical quality and what doesn't. There are people on here who know a lot more about scanners than I do so they may have other ideas but the two Epsons I've owned have always done a good job. The problem with scanners is that there doesn't seem to be middle ground of scanners in the roughly $2000 - $4000 range. You pretty much either buy a relatively inexpensive one like the 700/750 for about $500 or you have to pay $5000 and up for something that produces a noticeable improvement (unless you get into used drum scanners but that's a whole different ball game). At least that's my uninformed impression.
Printer - Epson 3800 if you want to do 16x20 prints. That printer can make prints as wide as 17 inches. There are less expensive printers that only go to 13 inches and would save a good bit of money. I'd avoid HP for now, there have been many complaints about their customer service and mechanical feed problems though plenty of people are happy with them too. I know nothing about Canon printers. One good thing about Epson, other than their quality, is that for many years they were the only manufacturer that was interested in the home photography market. So when you need help you can find thousands and thousands of people who know Epson printers. HP and Canon only recently entered this market and at this point have only a small portion of the market.
Photo Editing Program - Photoshop CS3 is the industry standard. However, there are lesser programs that seem to work well such as Photoshop Elements but I have no experience with them, I've used Photoshop only.
Computer - You should have a bare minimum of a gig of RAM and 2 is better, more is ideal. I've always used PCs and if that's what you use I'd suggest staying with it. You have enough to learn without also having to deal with a switch from PCs to Macs. No doubt some Mac fanatics will tell you that you'll die and go to hell if you don't get a Mac. I stay out of those debates, I've used PCs for my photography work for about 10 years now except for the Macs I used in school. The PCs have all been fine but you can make up your own mind on this one, it's more a computer question than a photography question IMHO.
Good Book - There are so many good Photoshop books around that it's hard to name just one. My favorite is Real World Photoshop by Blatner and Blatner but I don't know whether it's been updated to CS3 yet or not. I'd suggest just going to Barnes and Noble or some similar place and thumbing through the various books to see which you like. Just remember that Photoshop CS3 has only been out for about 6 months so you may still see CS2 books still around. I'd avoid them and make sure the book you get deals with CS3 even though the differences aren't all that great. This assumes, of course, that you buy Photoshop CS3. If there's a community college, university, etc. in your area that teaches a basic photoshop course that would be an ideal way to learn rather than relying solely on a book.
These suggestions are obviously highly personal. Other people will have other, equally good or better, ones. Mine are based on two main considerations. First, that you're just getting started but since you've done darkroom work your standards are fairly high so you don't want the bare bones least expensive stuff you could get away with. And second, trying to keep the already steep learning curve to a manageable minimum. You could switch from a PC to a Mac, you could buy a used drum scanner, you could buy a bunch of Photoshop plug-ins, etc. but then you're adding a lot more to an already steep learning curve. If you bought the things I've suggested you'd be paying about $500 for the scanner, $1200 for the printer, $600 for Photoshop, and about $30 for the book. If money is real tight there are ways of economizing without losing a lot. For example, you could probably find an Epson 4990 flat bed scanner used or refurbished for maybe $150 without giving up any quality in the scans. You could buy Photoshop Elements for about $100 instead of the full blown version for $600. If you have a lot more money to spend then you will have no trouble finding more expensive equipment than what I've suggested here.
Good luck. I abandonded the dark room (except for film developing) about seven years ago after about 20 years of off and on use and I've never regretted it. The digital learning curve is very steep and I sometimes feel more like a computer programmer than a photographer but the results are very very rewarding.
Brian Ellis
Before you criticize someone, walk a mile in their shoes. That way when you do criticize them you'll be
a mile away and you'll have their shoes.
How "big" of a computer are we talking? What beandname or model do you reccomend?Originally Posted by Frank Petronio
I respectfully, but wholeheartedly disagree with this. I don't think the Epson scanners are a good tool. Find yourself a used Howtek 4500. You will get 4000 dpi of very sharp pixels and pull shadow detail out that you didn't even know was there. Cost ranges from about 3-4K to about 10K, depending on all sorts of things. If you saw the differences between the scanners in terms of sharpness, you wouldn't bother with a flatbed of this type.
As to computer, I would suggest a Mac, filled with as much RAM as the computer will take. When you get over 5 Gigs things go a lot faster.
I prefer the Wide Format Epsons for getting started. There are more parts made of metal than the smaller ones and you will get more consistency. For paper, Hahnemuhle PhotoRag is well, amazing stuff.
For a book, I might try Amadou Diallo's b&w book. Very thorough..
You need to know that it isn't any cheaper than traditional processes, in some ways much more expensive.
Finally, I would find someone that actually knows what they are doing and pay them for a few hours of time to show you the ropes. This can save you a huge amount of time.
Lenny Eiger
EigerStudios
I agree with you. The difference from a quality scanner is night and day. Add an experienced operator. A wealth of great information in this post.
Does this mean you are available locally?Finally, I would find someone that actually knows what they are doing and pay them for a few hours of time to show you the ropes. This can save you a huge amount of time.
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