Digitizing Photos with a Scanner

There's a general assumption in the photography community that we only produce images using a camera or smartphone. While this might be partly true, there's also a sizeable proportion of image keepers who produce digital images using a dedicated scanner—although you can of course use a regular camera to scan artwork which we'll look at later.

Scanner types

Basically there are two types of scanner: the flatbed type, designed specifically for scanning paper documents and artwork (note: some of the more expensive flatbed models incorporate a lamp in the scanner lid thus enabling them to scan film) and the dedicated film scanner, designed to scan all kinds of negative or positive film (slides).

Above, left: Epson's current top-of-the-range flatbed and film scanner. Centre left: An innovative film scanner for smartphones. Centre right: A simple Kodak film scanner and, at right: a high quality...