I've got 8 year old, but good quality, Canon Canoscan slide/film scanner which is SCSI only, I still have a 1000s of old family slides (and some 35mm negs) I want to digitise, when I have the time, currently I use it under Photoshop on a G4 with an Adaptec SCSI card, I think it works ok under Tiger, but I always boot into OS 9 and keep that for dedicated film scanning. The quality is superb, and well worth the effort of waiting an age for them to scan!

Now I've got a shiny new iMac running Snow Leopard, I'd quite like to tidy the office. Is there any way of getting this older SCSI scanner to work over USB under Photoshop CS3 or above (or with any capture software to use the scanner), or would it be better to look for a native USB/Firewire scanner?

I know many of the good flatbeds offer slide scanning today, but are they as good as dedicated film scanners? I'm a photographer too, so quality is important, even if this is only a long term family project.

I think you'd struggle to get the SCSI scanner working to be honest. Firstly you'll need to find a USB to SCSI adapter - there were a few of them around a few years ago but I don't know if any of them are still being made, so it could be eBay. Then you'd have to hope the driver for the adapter worked with SL. Then you'd have to hope the scanner software worked with the adapter, or buy something like Vuescan instead, or find a TWAIN driver that may work directly with Photoshop. It could end up costing you about £100 overall. You can certainly get a USB negative scanner for that, possibly even a decent flatbed that can do negatives as well.

Depends entirely on how much money you have to spare, but buying a new scanner is certainly going to be less hassle.

Jon

Thanks jonbwfc, I expected it to be a pain! Will have a look around and see what's on offer. Still prefer to still with a dedicated box as I doubt those 4800dpi Lide (and similar) flatscanners can match the quality of a dedicated box. Don't really want to downgrade, worst case I'll keep the G4 for a bit longer...

Edited to add, amazingly Canon are keeping the drivers up to date, the Mac OS plug-in driver for the scanner was updated 26-Feb-11:
http://www.canon.co.uk/Support/Consumer ... index.aspx

So maybe if I find a SCSI-to-USB I'll be in business... will have a look on eBay before giving up!

Installed an Epson V700 at work, and I've done some scans on it today. A medium format scan at 6400dpi is a thing of beauty, and the 30 year old Kodachrome slides I tried also came up very well.
At 6400dpi, it's about the same speed as the other scanner in the department, a Nikon Coolscan IV, but the quality is, IMHO, head and shoulders above it.
The Epson is about £500 though...