Taking the plunge: Film/Print Photo Scanning

After considerable deliberation, I just ordered a photo scanner. I've done a lot of research and had narrowed my selection to models from Canon and Epson, with the Epson V600 winning out. I was prepared to spend $250.00 to $300.00 for a quality scanner, but I find there is a price gulf between "very good" scanners, which top out below $200.00, and the "great" scanners for which the low end is nearly $600.00.

Maybe later, but not now.

My main personal interest is digitizing about 20 years worth of negatives and transparencies. But the main likely business interest I have in a scanner would be to scan original photos (prints) for digital restoration. The former calls for a film/transparency scanner, the latter calls for a flatbed 99% of the time. So, while film scanning is a high priority, from a practical standpoint, I had to eliminate any film-only units from consideration. Fortunately, there are several options on the market that do both, though the film scanning on dual-purpose scanners is reported in most reviews to be at least a small compromise. However, I judged that the Epson V600 film/print scanner gets sufficiently good reviews from multiple sources for both kinds of originals to warrant jumping in with my debit card.

My plan is to scan selected images at an "overkill" resolution (I'm thinking about 6000 pixels on the long dimension, after crop, enough for a 20-inch print at 300dpi), and save a scanner raw file of each with any and all metadata that may be available for each image, which in most cases will only be the date the photo was taken (I filed by date) and any details I noted or can remember about the event that was photographed.

I cheaped out on shipping, so the projected arrival time for the scanner is middle of next week. I look forward to seeing what this baby can do and will share the results here.