filmscanners: Low res, high bit-depth flatbed?

["Dana Trout" <dana@troutcom.com>]

I'm looking for a low resolution (no more than 600 dpi native) flatbed
scanner with more than 8 bits per channel sent to the computer, and
that has a transparency head for at least 4" x 5", preferably larger.

The reason I want low resolution is that the final resolution of the
scanned transparencies is low, and I do not want to deal with the
moire patterns I get with decimation of high res scans (which is what
most scanner software does when you want a scan at lower-than-native
resolution), nor do I want to deal with huge files and then use
bicubic interpolation in PhotoShop. I do need high bit depth as these
are very old B&W negatives, many of which were not properly exposed
(ranging from extremely thin to incredibly dense). Quite often *all*
the info is in the shadows!

This is a job to be done at a remote site where it is much more
appropriate to use a laptop than a larger computer, but that means
limited disk space, limited memory, and limited speed of both the CPU
and disk. In such a scenario smaller files are better.

Thank you for your suggestions,
  --Dana