Good scanner for traditional art in larger paper sizes (A3 and smaller)

[Servant of the Lord 33726]

What's a good scanner for art, that supports up to 12" x 16" paper?

I'm looking for something circa $500, but can go somewhat higher. Mostly watercolors and other traditional artworks will be scanned (Copics artworks, as well).

 

It seems this is a small market, so most larger paper scanners are either cheap office scanners, or very expensive ($2500~) professional scanners, with only a few (junky?) scanners aimed at consumers.

Many artists seem to recommend digital cameras - which makes sense, given the intense market competition around megapixels a few years back.

 

What do you gents use or recommend?

[Hodgman 51865]

Many artists seem to recommend digital cameras - which makes sense, given the intense market competition around megapixels a few years back.

I've got some high-megapixel cameras that take truly awful photos because they have terrible lenses... But for $500 you can get a great mid-range DSLR that will work for you. You can also get some nice softbox photography lamps for under US$40 these days :o

[Promit 13303]

I'm not a big fan of the camera thing. The main challenge is lighting the piece evenly, without specular highlights or hot spots. It's also preferable to use a flat field macro lens if you use a DSLR, and that's not cheap. You might try stitching smaller flatbed scans with a pano tool:

https://havecamerawilltravel.com/photographer/scan-oversize-images

Edited November 22, 2016 by Promit

[Servant of the Lord 33726]

I'm not a big fan of the camera thing. The main challenge is lighting the piece evenly, without specular highlights or hot spots. It's also preferable to use a flat field macro lens if you use a DSLR, and that's not cheap. You might try stitching smaller flatbed scans with a pano tool:

https://havecamerawilltravel.com/photographer/scan-oversize-images

 

I'm looking for the scanner specifically for some artists I know (three of them) at what amounts to an art studio / artist meetup, and at least two of them scan artwork almost daily, and often work in A3-ish sizes as well as 'regular' (for me) letter-sizes. The scanner I'm replacing only scanned letter/legal sizes, so the artists have had to frequently stitch larger artworks together, and no longer wish to if it can be avoided. I've also, on more than one occasion, have stayed up entire nights scanning piles of artwork (30+ A3's) and stitching them together in Paint Shop Pro (the art software I use). It's easy to do (and the artists normally do it themselves), and the quality comes out plenty fine, but it's an annoying waste of time for any of us.

 

Since A4 artwork gets scanned pretty much all the time, I'd love for a way to make that task easier.

 

Good idea about looking for a software solution; thanks! I'll look into panorama software that might automate the process. If I can find one that basically does it automatically, and install them on each of the artist's computers, perhaps manually adding it to Window's context menu, then it could be as simple as selecting two or more images and doing Right-click -> Stitch Together. If it automatically works well, nine out of ten times, I don't think anyone would complain about having to fall back to manually stitching them together once in awhile.

[yaustar 1022]

How high resolution does the scan need to be? The reason I ask is it might be worth giving Google's Photo Scan a try if it doesn't need to be that high?