Tscan wrote: Anyway I think that where digital technology, software, and PC computing power are at these days, what's left to justify a $100K price tag on a decent scanner?
Productivity.
If you have large volumes of customer film coming in, you need to efficiently process the film into files in order to be able to get the work done without a huge or crippling backlog. Especially between late October and Christmas Eve, if you're a commercial operation transferring consumer film to whatever.
It's why being able to scan at faster than real time is attractive to many commercial transfer operations... and real-time scanning is a necessity.
Small-volume shops that don't scan much film per week... or individual consumers or hobbyists may be able to wait over weeks and months while they work on their personal collections, but that's not practical when you have thousands and thousands of feet of film to address, and the customer needs to begin working with the film.
If a business does enough volume, they can afford the technology, and expect it to work for many years. And that volume could be as low as a 400 foot reel of 8/Super8 per day at $.20/foot to cover a four-year lease or loan.
Ted Langdell
flashscan8.us
MWA film scanner distributor in the Americas