(A pretty typical picture, I know) I've found out that my (print) scanner is notorious for being dirty on the underside of the platen, and is uncleanable (Canon D660U) So, I won't have any digital prints for any serious uses, but I'll still have them on here, sans a little quality :

Very colorful....nice shot!

Crak - no screws on that thing? No hidden release clips? Gotta be a way to open it up and wipe down the glass on the underside. -=>Donald

Heh, the screws don't do anything, no clips of any use that I've seen, Apparently its a fairly wide problem with this scanner as I'm not the first to complain about it .)

My UMAX was like that.... I finally took a screwdriver to it and pried it open....of course if it's new you might not want to do that... I was to the point where the dust was driving me crazy and I didn't give a crap if I destroyed it or not....never was a very good scanner anyway. I cleaned it a couple of times more after that and then finally got rid of it the piece of junk that it was.....

The severe(and I know you have no originals to compare to) loss of sharpness is killing me, I've tried a few little things here and there in adobe to fix it but, hmm, so, what do you think, is it worth it, I mean, I enjoy posting pictures here and all, but, don't want people to think I've got chronic sharpness problems .) haha Well, either way, I've scanned them all(yeah, I took my time) 72 or so, of course I won't be using them all, but, anyway.

Beautiful flutterbye.

sorry to hear bout you scanner- that sucks, but the butterfly is really cool... i do miss seeing your shots in the gallery...

This looks pretty clean to me, but I do feel your pain. After years of mediocre (sometimes just plain bad) scans with a cheap Canon flatbed, I finally splurged on the Epson 3200. There's a huge improvement in the quality of my scans, both directly from negatives and from prints. At $400 I consider it quite a bargain, especially since I use it almost every day. If you can afford it, the satisfaction you'll get from sdomething newer and better might be worth it since you're working with so much film. :)