I'm about to start scanning my first 4x5 negatives. Until now I've been looking at contact sheets and scanning the contacts on an all-in one scanner and ingesting them into Aperture for cataloguing.

I'd like to ask a couple of generic questions and ask for any tips you might offer to a someone new to LF scanning (I've scanned 35mm in the past).

1) For those of you who send your film to a lab, do you still go to the expense of having the lab make a contact, or do you do it yourself? I can see where the contact would be helpful weeding out the really crappy stuff faster than scanning, but it costs a few bucks and ultimately ends up in a landfill.

2) If you make your own contact sheets with the scanner, do you scan at best resolution or something lower for the sake of a quick preview to decide whether the image is a keeper?

3) Is anyone using Aperture to catalog their LF material? If so, any problems scanning at max. and importing into Aperture (I read somewhere here that Lightroom is unkind to really big files, wondering if there are similar issues with Aperture).

I'm anticipating getting an Epson 750, if that matters for answering my inquiry.

As always, thank you very much for your help!