Originally Posted by
Brian Ellis
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.
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