Photo scanners and negative scanners are both useful tools for digitizing all your old photos. However, the two are somewhat different from each other, both in price and in performance. A true negative scanner gives you much better performance and can often scan more types of film than photo scanners.
Negative Scanner
A true negative scanner, also called a film scanner, can take old 35 mm negatives (or 120 mm, 220 mm or 35 mm slides) and scan them as developed pictures into your computer that you can then print. A high-end film scanner, like the Nikon Coolscan 9000ED, has excellent quality optical glass and can scan film strips or multiple slides at one time, greatly speeding up the process.
Photo Scanner
A photo scanner is a flatbed scanner that allows you to scan old photos, as well as documents. Many also have a small attachment that lets you scan negatives.
Resolution
The difference between resolution is one of the biggest differences between a photo/document scanner and a film scanner. A film scanner that lists a scan resolution of 4,000 dpi has that resolution for a scan of a single negative. A flatbed photo scanner with that same resolution has it for the entire flatbed, so when you place a 4-by-6 photo on the bed to scan it, you are using only a portion of that resolution.
Film Types
Another big difference between a photo scanner and a film scanner is that a film scanner will scan multiple types of film, including 120, 220 and 16 mm. Most photo scanners only have a transparency adapter than scan 35 mm negatives and sometimes 35 mm slides.
Speed
In addition to having greater accuracy, for bulk projects, dedicated film scanners are faster than photo scanners, especially since you can scan batches of negatives at once instead of a single photo each time.
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