School needing digital stuff to teach PS

[DP]

A friend-high school teacher-will start teaching digital photography and Photoshop and needs the goods but also has to submit the proposal with costs. I was asked to help but my stuff is pretty high end and I don't know what the consumer market has to offer these days. So I need to know what you all have in mind for scanners and printers that will be able turn out decent prints and scanned images that will also fit a school district's budget concerns. We're looking at five good flatbed scanners-probably two 35mm film scanners-and five good printers. We have five G4 dual 867's with OS 9.0 now and we have Tiger for them, more RAM coming, and CS2 on the way but the hardware is the important part. Any educators out there with similar circumstances? TIA.

[iaJim]

OK, I don't know how high the expectations for your friend are, but if his circumstances are like most public high schools, he isn't going to have to have GOOD flatbed scanners. The ones in the all in one HP printers do a pretty good job, and then he also has a printer, granted, the photo prints aren't high end, but they aren't bad either. The problem is the ink, of course. I was used to slumming it when it came to equipment, so I might not be the one to answer this. Does he really need the 35mm film scanner?

[mattkime]

almost any crappy scanner will be plenty for that work. better scanners scan negs and you don't really need that in a flatbed.

ink costs could eat you alive. perhaps explore non-inkjet options.

you might consider a simple lighting setup. some cheep-cheep digital cameras.

[Kraniac]

Epson makes some excellent and cheap scanners. Im pretty sure you could pick up an Epson flatbed that will produce remarkable scans for about 100 to 150. If you notch that up you can jump into a slighlty more pro line and those are great for consumer flatbed scanning.

Film scanners? Are these kids even shooting film? I know more than a couple of High Schools in my area that are still teaching traditional photo..right on, but not many of em left except when you hit the college level. that said, im sure there will a use for them..old family pics and what not...Nikon, Minolta...

You will get away with scanning medium format and larger film on a flatbed that has a transparency adapter...you NOT get away with scanning 35mm film on a flatbed...fairly useless even though the comanies say you can do it..dont bother.


You should invest in a good scannng software such as Silverfast for whatever flatbed you get. the Epsons, i believe are compatable with Silverfast. This can be a very important item.

Printerwise...Hard to say. this might be the toughest part of your whole deal because it's gonna be the item that gets beat up the most, plus, as one poster up there already indicated, you are into ink issues.

Epson, Canon and HP for inkjets.

HP has come out with a very well reviewed 13 inch printer (HP 9180 about $699 or so) and Canon has made similar leaps as well. Im not sure what the name of the Canon 13" printer is...look around
.
In Epson it's the 2400. very nice little printer

I've been using Epsons for quite sometime now and have been generally satisfied...very rare clogging issues for me...im sure some on this list will hark that they have clogging issues with Epson...never been a persistant problem here. I haven't heard about any clogging issues with the 2400 but I have for the larger 4800. I own a 4800 and have never had an issue.

I would try to save some money on the CS2...do students really need CS2? I have read about a few problems with Tiger and CS2..maybe rsolved right now.

Could you try to track down an old school edition of CS (no number, the first CS) It's very powerful...hell, photoshop 7 would probably do just fine. CS allows the use of 16 bit layers and some other stuff...not really stuff the kids will need at that level.

You also need to adress the issue of decent monitors for your comps...along with a fairly ok system for calibrating them. If you don't do this you are gonna waste a lot of money down the road. products by Colorvision should do the trick...Optical and the associated Spyder sensor for reading your monitor. It's pretty chaep and will do well enough for the kids.

Other than that...i dont have a freakin clue. It's the printer issue that bogs me...they are gonna tear those things up. almost tempted to say get a pro line Epson because they are much more durable..much.

see ya

[grad]

SCANNER: Do not buy a film scanner. It would be a waste of $$. Almost no one shoots film.

CAMERAS: Almost every family has a digital camera. You probably only need to buy 2, and lend them out on a sign-out basis.

PRINTERS: Five Printers for 30 students seems excessive. Buy 2 quality printers instead and use the remaining money for ink, etc.

[DP]

Thanx, all, for the input.