When I was in school it was no problem. But I seriously need to buy my own scanners now and I am not sure which route to go. The reason I ask is because I always used the film scanner for film and never had any experience doing it on the flatbed. I like shooting film sometimes still but I have no darkroom to use anymore.
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If you are only going to use scanner for reproducing film to print,
then a film scanner is all you need,
if you were going to scan drawing text files, ocr text, and other larger documents, then you would want a larger flat bed scanner,
if you were going to use scanner for faxing, then you may want a 3in1 multipurpose scanner /fax printer,
..
Depends on the unit…there will be some flatbeds better than a dedicated film scanners and visa versa but generally speaking a dedicated scanner will be better. Flatbed scanners with transparency options have vastly improved from their first inception though there has been little new innovation with either type of unit in the last 3 years or so. The Flatbed will obviously be more versatile but at extreme blow ups the image quality from a similar vintage similar priced dedicated film scanner will likely be a bit better. If I were making a choice now I’d probably choose a current Epson flatbed over an older dedicated unit. Make sure you get digital ice.
By the way…I compared scans from my epson v750 to what they were doing at a local lab with a fuji frontier. The epson scans were better although a 35mm frame with digital ice on the epson at 2400 dpi takes around 5 minutes…on the frontier a couple of seconds.
I’ve never tried one of those dedicated cheapo film scanners that you see sold all over the place now so I can’t make a judgment on those…my guess is that they should be avoided because they likely have stripped downed simplified software missing out on some important options but who know..they might be worth a look.
The answer to your question is “it depends”. Scanner technology has improved dramatically in recent years in at least two ways 1) The hardware has gotten much better and 2) Software has improved particularly in the areas of image rendering and restoration.
I would say that dedicated film scanners still provide a better solution for large volume processing of negatives and transparencies.
But high quality flatbed scanners with good processing engines can now produce comparable quality images although they may not be as fast. They also provide a big advantage in flexibility since they can handle a much wider array of materials and can cost significantly less.
I personally use an Epson V700 scanner that comes with various adapters for scanning strips of negatives (or individual negatives @ 4×5 & 8×10 inch sizes), 35mm slides in batches of about 20 and other unmounted transparencies in larger sizes.
My results in scanning slides and color negatives have been very good.
Here is a link to a few images scanned from 35mm slides and/or negatives more than 30 years old ~
http://www.flickr.com/photos/robs-photo-memory/sets/72157617690586928/
HTH.
If you can afford a dedicated film scanner, then obviously that is a better choice.
If you must get a flatbed scanner, get one that is geared for film scanning (like an epson 700 or something similar).
Or if you only shoot film once in a while, why not just have it scanned at the time of developing?