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| In the original enlargement, the model has great skin tones and difficult-to-reproduce colors in the dress, plenty of shadow detail in the hair, and great highlight and color detail in the flowers. Each scanner's speed rating was based on the time it took to scan this photo at 300 dpi resolution. |
What's the best and most affordable way to get high-quality photos and artwork into your computer? That depends on whom you ask, and what you mean by "high quality." Many photographers send their negatives and slides out to get scanned onto Kodak Picture CDs at processing time, while others extol the instant feedback and virtues of digital cameras. But each method leaves something to be desired: high image resolution. The 1.5 megapixel scans found on Picture CDs don't provide enough data to make sharp 8x10s, and even 3.3 megapixel cameras don't leave much room for cropping an image before enlarging it. Your best bet, in terms of overall image quality, is to shoot with color negative or slide film and scan your originals using a high-res film scanner. But these cost a bundle and aren't very flexible when it comes to scanning other items. Flatbed scanners, on the other hand, are much more affordable and can be used to digitize your prints (and in some cases, film) or just about any other item you can fit on the scanner bed. But with flatbed scanners costing anywhere from $19 to $2,000, how do you know which ones will do the best job when it comes to scanning photos?
To find out, we put 10 flatbed scanners (ranging in price from $179 to $1,999) through a battery of tests that determined each unit's resolution, color accuracy, highlight and shadow detail, and speed. You can see the results for yourself on the following pages, along with a listing of the features and software included with each scanner. Before we get to those results, let's take a closer look at what makes a flatbed work, as well as important features to look for.
Basically, flatbed scanners are relatively simple devices that consist of a housing, lid, and glass plate, which accepts the material to be scanned. Inside, there's a scanning element (usually a linear CCD), an optical arrangement of lenses and prisms, and a light source. The CCD, lens set, and light source are moved along the length of the scanning bed by a precision stepping motor; as this happens, the light illuminates the scanned object and is reflected back through the optical setup to the CCD. The rest of the components within the scanner are primarily electronic and include the analog-to-digital converter, which turns the signal from the CCD into digital data; the stepping motor controls; and other components for communicating with the computer.
So what features should you look for in a flatbed scanner? Flatbed prices have fallen dramatically in the last few years, while features and capabilities have improved significantly. But price is not always an indicator of a scanner's image quality, as we found out during our test (the lowest-priced unit, the Agfa SnapScan e50, delivered far better color accuracy than the highest-priced unit, the Microtek ArtixScan 1100). The next key concern is resolution, which is accurately determined by comparing a scanner's optical ppi (pixels per inch, often listed as dpi), not its interpolated ppi. Several scanners now feature extremely high resolution along the central area of the scanning bed for scanning transparencies or smaller prints. All of the units we tested feature 600 dpi or higher scanning resolutions, which is more than adequate for capturing all of the detail in a sharp photo print.
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