One of the great things about digital photos is that they’re so accessible on your PC, especially compared with all those old snapshots that you’ve got buried away in shoeboxes at the back of the wardrobe. The latest breed of scanners can help them join the party, quickly, simply and effectively.

What type of technology should I go for?

Traditional flatbed scanners use a CCF (Cold Cathode Fluorescent) lamp for the light source, similar to those used for backlighting LCD monitors.

One of the chief advantages about CCF lamps is that their colour accuracy is very stable, although they do take a minute or so to warm up to the correct operating temperature.

LED light sources are now finding favour in some of the latest scanners, as they also have a very stable colour temperature but, unlike CCF lamps, require no warm-up time at all.

Most standalone flatbed scanners use a CCD (Charge Coupled Device) image sensor, similar to those used in digital cameras. The alternative is CIS (Contact Image Sensor) scanning which, as it’s name suggests, places the sensor in very close proximity to the document or photo being scanned.

Outright scanning quality tends to be slightly inferior, especially for photos but, as well as usually being used in MFD printers, CIS scanners offer great mobile advantages.

With fewer moving parts, such as mirrors and lenses, they’re very slim and light in weight, so easy to carry around.

They can also take all the power that they need from the host computer’s USB port, so there’s no need to carry a separate power supply.

Do I need a transparency adaptor?

The quick answer is that you only need an FAU (Film Adaptor Unit) if you want to scan film.

Most photo-friendly A4 flatbed scanners costing £60 or more come complete with film adaptors for taking 35mm positive or negative film frames, either in strips or as individual, mounted slides.

New Canon and Epson models costing over £100 make pretty much as good a job of film scanning as most dedicated film scanners.

How much resolution and colour depth do I need?

For scanning documents or photo originals that you want to print out at the same size, you only need a maximum of 300dpi scanning, which almost every scanner on the market can now exceed.

Higher optical scanning resolutions enable you to enlarge photo print originals, while very high resolutions are more useful for film scanning.