I'm about to buy a film scanner, so I wont have to pay $6.00 per roll to develope film, rather $2.00 for negatives. Since negatives have that dark mask over them does the film scanner take this away, only to leave the true-color image? Also, how decent of quality does 3600 dpi supply? I'm on somewhat of a budget.

Thanks.
-Jared.

A dedicated film scanner will remove the dark tint that a negative has on it. When you scan the image it will leave the image in true color as you put it, as if you were scanning a reflective image. I would recommend scanning as high as you need for what you are going to do with it. Most dedicated film scanners are capable of 4000+ DPI and I would recommend a Firewire or USB 2.0 scanner as scanning that high is time consuming, even with a lot of RAM.

I have a Microtek 4000tf scanner and love it. You can view the specs and all of that information from their website at:

http://www.microtekusa.com/as4000tf.html

Jeffrey Zweig