Miriam,     
       I bought an Agfa StudioScan II machine in 1996. I subsequently
bought the transparency adapter. The  scanner works very well for flat art,
but as was Karen's experience, the results with 35mm slides are at best,
merely mediocre.  The upper resolution limit on this scanner is 800dpi and
even when highly detailed 35mm slides are enlarged to about 400% for
viewing on my monitor, the results are still somewhat hazy and a bit washed
out. I did experiment with scans of 8X10 chromes and the results where
mucher closer to the level of flat art.  I had also experimented with scans
of color negative film and those results were totally unacceptable, even
lagging behind the 35mm chrome scans in quality.  (The images can all be
manipulated in Photoshop, to "punch" them up, so to speak.  Nevertheless,
they still seem inferior to the results of scanned in flat art).   My sense
is that a dedicated slide scanner with an higher input resolution is vastly
superior.  So, I agree with Karen's assessment.  Now, its only a matter of
money...  Cheers,  Mike Rothman [log in to unmask]