Why do flatbed scanners seem to have so little dynamic range for sketches? I draw for fun, usually with a 0.5mm mechanical pencil. I do not put a lot of pressure onto the pen because it allows for more details/subtle shading. When I scan the images, the "light" details are always blown out and no amount of fiddling xsane's settings (gamma, brightness, contrast) seems to reveal them. Is there a trick I'm missing, or paper+scanner just really sucks and I should just use my tablet? Example scanned drawing lacking much of the visual information that the eye can see on paper. Scanners I have used over the years: HP ScanJet 3300C, Canon lide (briefly), and now a Brother MFC-5840CN.