The other trick xircom (pe3 at least) has is powering it either by a power adapter or from a passthrough keyboard plug.
I've heard good things about them but I do believe they need a bidirectional parallel port. I never find a bargain on them so haven't played with one yet but you can find them hovering around the $15 mark on a good day.
On Sun, Oct 28, 2012 at 10:17 PM, Zane H. Healy <healyzh at aracnet.com> wrote:
>
> As has been pointed out, MegaPixels is a poor judge, BUT, consider this,
> how many MP is in a sheet of 4"x5" or 8"x10" film, even when only scanned
> at 2400dpi? The best prints I've ever seen have been 8x10 contact prints
> made by Edward Weston. The sharpness of these prints, especially given the
> lenses he was using, is enough to blow ones mind! Digital *CAN NOT* touch
> a large format contact print done by a master of the craft!
>
Not sure if it is applicable in still-format photography, but in the motion
picture world there is a concept of film to resolution equivalence. It's
particularly important as with film you are enlarging the 35mm stock by
several thousand percent when scanning into the digital domain. A "pixel"
in the conversion is considered to be the smallest object that can be
resolved and reproduced by the film or sensor. When using that comparison,
a 35mm print is roughly 20 megapixels, or 8K resolution, assuming the film
was shot and developed under ideal conditions. Scanning at any higher
resolution doesn't buy you more detail, as you start getting into the grain
at that point.
