I need help picking out hardware. I'm going to be scanning some prints, I don't need to worry about film. I come from a normal family of illiterates that throw the negatives out when the prints are made. I'm not that close with my family and I'm not going to be inheriting most of these pictures so it is likely I wont easily ever have a chance to see these pictures again when my grandmother is gone.
So while I have the chance I want to do this right and max out the quality of the scans I'm going to get. I've tried to figure this out by myself but it would be nice to get some other opinions. It seems like the Epson v600 might be good enough that it can capture more than enough data than prints can give. The v850 seems have slightly deeper resolution for shades of dark. A decent amount of the pictures will be black and white.
Are there any other options I'm missing? It seems a bit strange that a 15 year old scanner would be the best option on the market. Does the 850 produce tangibly better results? Because of the context I want to do this as best I can now. Lastly what resolution should I aim for to have master scans? Thank you