I have hundreds of black and white prints (from shooting with film) and I want to put them on my computer for safe keeping and so i can also put together a website for my photography work. I have tried scanning the actual prints but they never look as good on my computer. I still have all my contact sheets so I was thinking of investing in a film scanner instead. Does anyone have any suggestions on good ones to buy that they may have tried and have feed back for? Thanks! Oh yea...and preferably scanners that are under $400. Thanks again.

Part of the problem is your price limit.  Take a look at this scanner:

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/control … Navigation

There's one that's even more expensive. 

When you said "contact sheets," did you mean negatives?  Scanning the negs would definitely be better.  You can make them look pretty good with adjustments to curves, levels, and contrast.

Paul

Epson 4990. This one lists for a little over $400.
It will handle film up to 8x10 and also scan prints. I may get one.

http://www.epson.com/cgi-bin/Store/cons … d=49164280

Honestly, depending on what you're looking to do, I would recommend the Konica-Minolta Dual Scan IV. It's definitely not as good as the Coolscan, but I've been getting pretty acceptable results with mine. I'm using Vue-Scan software instead of the included software, tho. Much better results with that. I've also been using Neat Image to control the grain.

If you're just looking to get your negs digitized for use mainly on the web, or make some proofs for later printing, the Dual Scan will do more than enough. I've even got some good 8x10's out of it.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/de … 0?v=glance

My vote is for the $250.00 Konica-Minolta Dual IV.

All my profile images were scanned with one.

Hrm it seems like if you ever want to scan your own medium format film, the Epson one gona be your cheapest bet, of all the dedicated film scanners I seen I havent seen a brand new one for under a thousand that could handle anything larger than 35mm.