My first is about film scanners. I've sunk so much money into the new analogue format and so need to be prudent about more spent in the old. I'd like to play with B+W, so develop my own negatives, but once their dry what scanner do I need? No I won't jump on the latest and greatest Epson for my first steps, but would a $50 flatbed suffice....and I assume not.
I used to run a scanning service for stock photographers up until a couple of years ago, and I'm still regularly scanning my own film collection, of mostly colour transparencies.
The great problem with shooting on film and working with it, and I presume printing it, digitally is that getting results that you might be happy with is neither cheap or easy. If you are not that bothered about printing large sizes, and therefore don't need large files, then you can go with the slide attachments on flatbeds. However, I suspect that you may end up being disappointed with the results.
Dedicated fims scanners are better, but they are now few and far between these days, and none of the decent ones are cheap.
The first problem is to get a scan thats clean. No matter how hard you try the negatives and transparencies will still have dust and other "foreign bodies" on them that are invisible to the naked eye, but need removing. There is software that deals with this, most notably Digital Ice. However the problem is that Digital Ice doesn't do black and white and scanning without using software like this means spending a LONG time cloning out dust spots, which is real pain. This is also the problem with using some kind of macro adapter or macro lens on a digital camera. You end up having to remove all the dust yourself.
From Wikipedia.
"Digital ICE is used to detect scratches and dust during transparent film scan and is not applicable for opaque document scanning. Where Chromogenic black-and-white films are supported by Digital ICE, other black-and-white films containing metallic silver (which form from silver halides during the development process of the film) are not. This is because the long wave infrared light passes through the slide but not through dust particles. The silver particles reflect the infrared light in a similar manner to dust particles, thus respond equally in visible light and infrared light"
Is the process important to you? Are you keen to process your own negatives? Because if not, there are labs who will develop and scan the film for you. If you invest in a decent scanner and then only run a few films through it, then its a substantial amount of money for not a lot.
Is shooting on colour film, scanning that and converting to B/W an option that would appeal? The problem with that is you then loose the special characteristics that B/W film possesses.
Is making a conventional B/W print and then using a flatbed to scan that an option?
If you are set on using B/W negative film, developing it yourself and then scanning it, you have picked what I would regard as the hardest route to go. In fact when I and my partner were scanning for others, we refused to do black and white, as we couldn't get a good result unless we scanned and manually "cleaned" every file ourselves. This took hours and nobody would pay us to do that.
The big question is, what do you want as the end result? Do you want the classic 10 x 8" print, something small for the internet, something in between or all of the above?
The simplest and cheapest, and many would argue, the best way to shoot and print B/W film is the conventional way. i.e. print your own negatives onto photographic paper using an enlarger. Once you are happy with this, then its relatively easy to get a decent scan from a flatbed.
I'd love to be able to recommend a cheap, good quality, scanning solution, but I can't think of anything that would suit B/W negative film. If you wanted to do 35mm colour, then the Plustek 7600i is relatively cheap, and gets good reviews.