The Epson V550 dimensions are 11.2 x 19.1 x 4.6 and weighs about 9.6 pounds while the V600 model comes in at 11 x 19 4.6 and weighs about 9 pounds. They have a simple and bulky design. Both models are more like flatbed scanners.If the tedium doesn't kill you, something else will.Epson Perfection V550 Driver. Figure an hour for every roll of film on your high-end flatbed scanner or even a dedicated 35mm scanner and, well, you retired too late. Frankly, we don't recommend a scanner at all.
![]() We were particularly curious to see how it measured up to Canon's MP980 all-in-one, which is about the same price.SHORT COURSE ON SCANNING | Back to ContentsYou can skip our Short Course on Scanning if you know this stuff already. But, he said, it outperforms inexpensive flatbeds. Photoshop Elements for a complete photo retouching solutionEpson Product Manager Rick Day admitted that the V600 does not produce film scans that are as good as the company's V700/V750 high-end flatbeds. Simple math.Find out how many dots per inch your printer requires to make a high quality print. If you scan a 35mm film frame (which is 1.0x1.5 inches) at that resolution, your image size will be 1200x1800 pixels. The second one is usually higher - and inconsequential.So if a scanner touts an optical resolution of 4800x9600, it's the 4800 that matters.An inexpensive flatbed may have an optical resolution as low as 1200-dpi (although the trend is upward). Two numbers represent optical resolution: the number of sensors in the sensor array and how finely the stepper motor can move the sensor down the scanner bed. Adobe indesign cs6 for macYou can specify the amount of brightness to add to the edge pixels, the brightness difference to define an edge and how wide a border to be affected. As Taz Tally explains the phenomenon in his excellent SilverFast: the Official Guide, "Because a scanner does not capture all of the available image data but rather samples an image and averages the values, it tends to slightly lower contrast along high-contrast edges and smooth out the image."The solution to this has always been to apply some sharpening to the scan. It's no fault of the scanner. A raw scan will always look softer than the original. One of the more misunderstood aspects of scanning is sharpness. To get an 8x10 from that 35mm frame, you have to be able to scan 2400 dpi.The 6400 dpi of the V600 easily exceeds that requirement.Sharpness. But with a Raw image capture or a scan, you want to indulge in a little input sharpening as well. We usually talk about output sharpening, the last step in image editing, which is tailored to the output device, print size and viewing distance. There are three kinds of sharpening you can subject an image to. To avoid adding grain or noise to the low contrast areas of your scan, you'll want to increase the Threshold dramatically.It's important to put this in perspective. But dedicated film scanners have a Dmax as high as 4.2.Density range is really what this game is all about. Otherwise everything in the shadows is just black.Most flatbeds brag about a 3.x Dmax, which is more than enough for reflective material. To capture as much detail as possible from film, you need a very high Dmax, the maximum density at which shadow detail can be distinguished. Your scans will look disappointingly soft without it.Dmax. Then subtract the published Dmax to get the dynamic range. Yes, we're giving the manufacturers the benefit of the doubt (they didn't burn out the highlights). Slides can have a dynamic range of 3.2 to no more than 4.0 and negs a little less.Assume a fairly common Dmin of 0.3 and handicap the Dmax figures you see. But it's hard to find a range rating from a scanner manufacturer, even when they underwrite independent tests.You need a dynamic range of 2.0 for reflective material like prints. Dmax numbers are often inflated by cranking up the exposure so high that highlight detail is burned out (which would be represented by a much higher than normal Dmin). Less expensive flatbeds like the V600 can scan either four slides or two strips of six-frame negatives. A high-end flatbed like the Epson V700 can batch scan up to a dozen 35mm slides or negatives at a time. If we were scanning a lot of film, we might wish we had a faster USB connection, but for single scans, you'll survive.Batch Scanning. Not all USB 2.0 ports are Hi-Speed (and Full Speed is slower than Hi-Speed), so you'll have to do a little research to see if your computer is up to this task.We actually tested the V600 with an older machine that had just USB 1.1 ports and it ran just fine. Our test slide scans were about 61MB, in fact.With Hi-Speed USB 2.0, the V600 does its part but your computer has to have a USB port that fast, too. High resolution scans result in very large files, so you need a fast connection to transfer that data from the scanner to your computer. Epson V550 Scanner Software Software Remains AEven for us.Another solution we've long recommended is LaserSoft's SilverFast Ai. The hardware control is there and the options, too, but you just can't find them, remember them or set them. Scanning software remains a good bit behind the times, much as if no one has done anything interesting yet in user interface design. That's a big help.Software. And it saves you time.That Canon MP980 can take one film strip at a time, for example, but the V600 can do two. The frame finding technology in SilverFast leaves a lot to be desired (at least on the Mac version) and VueScan's approach is more like shooting in the dark. One of the advantages of using the manufacturer's software, however, is it's usually aware of the location of the film frames in the product's film carriers. But in this case, we were obliged to stick with Epson Scan 3.80, which is not in the same league as either of the other two products, unfortunately.Film Carriers. It can also automatically calibrate the scanner using a special IT8 target barcoded by LaserSoft.Again, it's not yet available for the V600.We don't like to use any other software to test scanners.
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