HP has a nice flatbed scanner that you can find for a bit less
than $500. As with most computer equipment, I figure you get
what you pay for. The scanner comes with software (Photoworks?).
Now I need to convince the wife that a new scanner is more important
than building her a greenhouse. Fat chance. A friend of mine has a
Mustek flatbed scanner that he paid under $400 for, he says it's great.
It's about the same size as the HP.
For the time being, I have located a print shop a few blocks from my
house that will make halftones for $18 a sheet. If I crop the photos to
fit the newsletter before I take them to the shop, I should be able to
get an entire issue's worth of photos on one sheet. I was using
halftones in the past but the guy who was doing them went out of
business rather suddenly so I put out a couple of issues by pasting
the color photos onto the master copies I took to the copy shop. The
results were horrible since most shops want to make a master copy
from the pasted-up original and run second generation copies off of
that. It makes it easier for them and they couldn't care less about the
quality of the finished product. I just located a copy shop that told me
"of course we will run your copies off the originals-the halftones
wouldn't copy well otherwise". It's going to cost me an extra $20 or
so an issue (I mail about 200 newsletters) but the club's board of
directors agrees that it is a small price to pay for a good newsletter.
Dave Fain
Rocky Mountain Triumph Club, Denver
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