By Molly McLaughlin on December 20, 2009 in
Though many people use multifunction printers for their scanning needs, dedicated scanners are still the best way to convert an aging collection of photos, negatives and slides into a digital format. The Canon CanoScan 8800F (*Est. $180) is the reigning champion of multipurpose scanners according to reviews, and will meet the needs of most users. It does a particularly good job scanning photos, slides and film negatives. Beyond that, reviewers say it's a fine document scanner as well, and it's both PC and Mac compatible.
If you're on a budget, the entry-level Epson Perfection V300 scanner (*Est. $90) will not disappoint, according to reviewers. It's twice as fast as other budget scanners and comes bundled with decent photo editing and optical character recognition programs. It doesn't cut corners where it counts, either, with 4800-dpi optical resolution and 48-bit color depth. Like the aforementioned Canon, the Epson V300 scanner is also PC and Mac compatible. Professional photographers should step up to Epson's Perfection V700 (*Est. $550) and more sophisticated sibling Perfection V750-M Pro (*Est. $800).
Finally, the Fujitsu ScanSnap S1500 (*Est. $425) is a workhorse document scanner. It has a 50-sheet automatic document feeder (ADF), 20 page-per-minute scan speeds, and can also scan both sides of a page at once. Included iin its purchase price is the full version of Adobe Acrobat, so you can scan documents in PDF format. Be advised, that unlike the other scanners we just discussed, there are separate versions of the Fujitsu for PC and Mac OS X (S1500M).
For more detail on these scanners and an overview of the technology, check out our recently updated scanner report.