For scanning negatives or transparencies, it seems pretty clear to
me that the direct film scan is the way to go. Other replicants
(people who've replied already :-) ) have given the basic technical
reasons for that.
One advantage that flatbed scanners do have is that they can scan
things other than just film. If you have prints for which you don't
have the negative or if you consider the printing process to be a
part of the black and white photographic process, you may want the
flexibility to scan such objects. Plus, you can get bad pictures
of slightly 3 dimensional objects by scanning them on the platen.
:-) If you really want the quality of the film scan, you can get
a cheap flatbed to give you that flexibility though (since it's less
than a 100rice increase to add the $60 flatbed to the purchase of
the $700 film scanner)
Of course, you don't get a great flatbed for $60, but for most purposes
(read, web display) that is probably good enough.
One thing to keep in mind is that it will take more than 300 scans before
your personal film scanner pays for itself over the cost of getting someone
else to scan your images for you (not counting the time it takes to learn
to use it and to go through the procedure). You'll very likely get better
scans that way, too, since they can afford better than the $1k film scanner
and do very little else all day.
Of course, I'm into gadgets so if I had the $$ I'd probably spring for
one just to play with. But given limited budget, if I only wanted a few
scans, I'd just pay to have a photo CD made because the cost of the
scanner wouldn't be worth it. If I wanted a thousand scans, I'd probably
pay to have a few photoCDs made because the time to scan them wouldn't
be worth it...
joey
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