My last 4990 after just 8 months took a dive this week. Of course I scan around 50 images a week. Which is hard on these plastic beasts. I only use it for 120 commercial images so I replaced it with a Nikon 8000. In less than three years I have gone thru 4 Canon 9950's, 1 Epson 3200, 2 4870's, 3 4990's, two Microtek 1800f's and now a used Nikon 8000. So my current stable is the Microtek for 4x5 B&w and the Nikon for the commercial volume color. Clearly these under $1000 scanners are not made for serious volume professional use. I'm not sure what the solution is here. I would love to find a reasonably priced scanner that would do it all. A drum scanner is simply too slow for the volume we need. I can't afford an Imacon, I could almost by a car with that and I need a new SUV, my current one has 200,000 miles on it and still have one kid in college. It is starting to make some sense to shoot the commercial work digitally.
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