If you've noticed that a lot of my recent posts have images from a long time ago, the reason is because I just got a new film scanner and I've been re-scanning slides that didn't work well with my older scanner.

And while on the subject of scanners, here's some scanner advice.

My new scanner is very highly rated and very highly regarded, but when I first made some test scans, the results weren't very promising. While they had better shadow detail, they lacked the sharpness of the images from my earlier scanner. At one point, I actually considered returning the new scanner.

Then I decided to try some third-party software designed for this scanner. One of the products saved the day, with increased sharpness, higher speed, and a better overall user interface. It was worth the extra expense to purchase this software after evaluating the trial version.

The moral is that while manufacturers of scanners, cameras, and other hardware have an obligation to provide some sort of software to support their products, they don't have a great incentive to put great effort or expense into it. Most people buy the hardware because they feel it's the best, but seldom because it comes with good software.

Software manufacturers, on the other hand, have a great incentive and that's what creates products like Photoshop and other third-party software.

While I understood the necessity of good software for working with my camera's images, I didn't realize that the same would be true for scanners.

Lesson learned.