Scanner hardware advice
 

Ok so my old scanner has packed in. Whatever I do I can't wake it up.

So as I have a nice issue of CC's "Exciting" to share with you good people, I figured I'd ask those who know to recommend a good scanner..

Ideas please. My budget is not especially limited. I just want very good quality and none of that horrible Moire interference. After all, these scan are preserving filth for posterity!

Epson v600 superb imo. Some people complain abt epson s/w, not for scan quality but other kinks. Having got used to it I'm ok. Solution to moire is "descreening" which is a box to click for mags & the like but not other stuff.

Whatever you do, avoid HP !



(i have a canon scanner now and while it it simple it works fine)



Edit: last time i had a HP scanner, it forced 2 non-erasable desktop icons on me, and their software was extremely pushy, while the scanning itself didn't allow me for much customisation / choices. It's by far the worst i have experienced and made me never want to have anything to do wit HP ever again.

Use a digital camera! I have done this since my scanner died and it gives excellent results. You may need to crop the image but that's all.I just download the images onto my PC and do the rest with Irfanview. If you haven't got Irfanview , it's free, uses next to no CPU or memory and is amazingly versatie. It's been my default image viewer from my first PC and it's the first thing I load onto a new one.

Now this idea never occurred to me, but I'm sure going to try it out. The two things that occur to me as potential issues are a) keeping the mag flat b) avoiding reflections from the glossy paper. How do you deal with that?

As long as the light is from the side, no problem. A sheet of glass (non reflecting if possible) or perspex might be tried. But the beauty of it all is that you can see what's on the screen and adjust accordingly.
I've not used it for glossy magazines but I always copy important documents using the camera.

I have a scanner/printer from Brother for A3, which is excellent though now quite a few years old. The model has been replaced since by a successor, but it's worth trying.
Of course, this is pricier and bigger (mine cost £250 when it was new).

For porn mags of that period you won't need A3, unless you go for Italian mags. Personally I wanted A3 because (i) quite a few mags I collect are large-format, (ii) I also collect movie lobby cards which are often two large to scan with A4. With good stitching software (e.g. ICE) you can often avoid these large scans, but besides stitched images not always coming out nicely, the A3 scans simply save you quite a bit of time.

I would discourage simply photographing the content: you get issues with light-reflection, perspective distortion, lens distortion, and the simple annoying little thing of getting the mag flat in the first place.

Not if you plan to share your magazines in the Magazine Scans section of VEF! The section rules prohibit the posting of photographs. There's no reason not to buy a decent scanner. They're very inexpensive and give far better results than you're likely to achieve with a camera.

I personally use a Brother home office all in one machine (laser printer, scanner, copier, fax, toaster oven). And I agree about HP. The last HP printer I had forced me to buy $40 ink cartridges even though there was plenty of ink in them. Their scheme was to have the cartridge expire so many days after activation. I'll never buy another printer from them.

No, don't do this. Not a good solution for flat material; camera lenses -- outside of some exotic models-- are not made for accurately imaging flat material. The battle in imaging magazines is dealing with moire-- the irritating patterns that result from the dot patterns than the photo is composed of; using a camera will ensure that you can never get rid of moire.

A scan is infinitely better, and high quality scanners are cheap.

Epsons in my opinion are by far the best. Certainly not the cheapest, but very robust. I use an Epson V700, this is overkill for document scans but it does a great job on negatives and transparencies as well. As has been mentioned, the software takes a bit of getting used to. If you don't like it, Vuescan works well with this scanner and is more versatile.