Epson Perfection V700 PHOTO Flatbed Scanner

Hello Everyone,

This is my 4th and probably final scanner. I've had the Acer A 320 (great for paper), the Epson 3200 (great for paper and film from 2 1/2 x 2/14 and up, the Nikon 8000 (film up to 2 1/4 x 3 1/4 -fantastic), and now the Epson Perfection V700 (paper and film).

If you've already owned a flatbed or film scanner, then it's quite easy to work with the V700. The software that Epson provides has Grain Reduction, Digital ICE, and unsharp mask. I've tested the unit with some 35mm slides and was impressed what a flatbed scanner could do with a slide. The results were great in terms of no grain, capturing fine detail, and very little dust.

I scanned the slides at 4800 DPI and came up with a 1.12" x .84" size of 62.5 MB. I then enlarged the image to 7.875" x 10.5" @ 514 DPI for the same file size of 62.5 MB. You really don't need to go so high, as the human eye is satisfied with 300 DPI and can't resolve any higher!

I used my 1270 Epson printer (about 10 years old now and still working great!) to make the print.

You should have (and most of you undoubtedly have) a fast computer (mine's a slow 2.0 ghz PC) and Photoshop.

Now for some good and bad (but not so bad):

1. The D-Max is 4.0 (the ability to capture a range of tones from dark to light) compared with the more-expensive V750 (D-Max of 4.3). However, anyone knowing Photoshop would know that you can scan the same slide at different exposures (to capture light and dark tones) and then blend them altogether in Photoshop (the specific command escapes me for now). So spending the extra $ 300.00 really isn't worth the cost. Also with the V750, you can use oils to fine-tune your film and eliminate scratches (a messy technique).

2. Like most scanners, the parts are "plasticky". Be careful to avoid breakage, and use a well-lit room. In this way you won't break off small pieces of the film holders.

3. Use a dust-cover because the higher the resolution of the scanner, the more it will capture - especially dust or scratches, even if you use an anti-static cloth or brush!

4. I purchased the Nikon 8000 to transfer my collection of 8000 slides to digital. I'm a teacher who had a large slide collection like anyone else. I started out scanning my family slides and after I did that (about 500 slides that my father had taken in the 1950's and early 60's I called it quits. For teaching purposes I could download images from the Web. Try to buy 1 used - $900-1400 if you can!

Why did I mention that? Because each slide takes time to scan. You have to do a preview, and then scan.
You then do some small retouching in Photoshop, save the file and backup, and you have about 8 minutes of work. Multiply that by 100 slides, you get 800 minutes or about 15 hours of work! Are you a good editor? Do have like staying indoors in winter?

Once you've done some fine-tuning for your slides (Kodachrome, Ektachrome 5500 and 3200 Kelvin, Fujichrome,you can scan 12 slides at a time.

5. It's hard to find a used V700 on e-Bay. If you buy a scanner, you'll most likely keep it. In my case, I bought it from someone who needed to copy a set of images, and then resold it. Most of the time the sellers are stores. Another slightly annoying thing was that Epson raised their price for this scanner by $100.00 from 2008 to 2009!. T

In conclusion, if you're serious on keeping all those "historic" film or print images to pass on to your sons and daughters or to the next generation, then this is the scanner to have- period!

When I was ready to get something better than a $50 scanner, I went to an instructor at the local Community College. He teaches Photoshop, photography, and, by the way, is a successful commercial photographer. I asked him what to buy, and he said the V700 was the ONLY one in the running.

I ordered one from an online source for about $200 less than retail. It arrived in perfect new condition. I installed the software, and immediately my PaperPort recognized it as a new device. I did a few scans of receipts as I normally do, and it worked fine. I miss having the measuring scale on the physical platform and replicated on the scan preview. And the corner of the platform just seems to be a slight bit out of square, my originals never seem to 'seat' quite right.

But once I started scanning, I could see the difference between this and a $50 scanner. First, the choices of resolution and quality abound, up to 9600 dpi, which, by the way, makes a HUGE file. I also have a number of choices for the resulting file format, including a .pdf file, which is my favorite choice for archiving documents. I can single-step or batch scan a number of pages into a single PDF.

The REAL reason I bought this scanner was to do some slide digitizing. I've got a large (and OLD) collection of slides, and I've been aching to add those images to my growing digital collection. The Espon comes with a number of masks and frames that make the process simple. Once you learn how the slides should be oriented in the frame, you just fill it up and park it on the platform. You also have to remove the overhead pad so the scanner works on transparency instead of reflected light.

You do a preview, which shows you up to twelve slides. Here you can do orientation correction selectively, meaning the one that's upside-down, sideways, or inverted can be corrected with a mouse-click. You can also do some pretty sophisticated color correction, which nearly ALL my slides need, as they are decades old. The corrections are excellent, sidestepping time-consuming Photoshop steps. Now, the Preview screen shows the twelve slides, but they are not oriented the same way you put them in the frame, and that's a little confusing, but you get over it.

When you start the scan, the Epson software will build filenames in a consecutive naming structure, making it easy to do a slide tray batch without a lot of typing and tracking. It just does it.

I found that 35mm slides work best in a compromise of resolution and filesize. At 800 dpi, each image comes out to be around 4-5MB in size, and excellent quality. If you have a superb slide image, and are willing to wait for the results, you can choose up to 9600 dpi. I did that once, and the results were impressive, but the original slide must warrant that kind of time and resource. Mine did not.

All in all, the V700 (which is the stripped-down, non-batch, non-feeder version of the V750) is a great buy. Paper is fine, but film is just the best. 'Way outperforms my old HP color scanner with optional transparency lid, which cost me $1800 years ago. Those days are gone, and so is that old HP.

I highly recommend the Epson V700, and the software that comes with it. Even if you're a purist wanting nothing but the raw scan, it works GREAT. And if you want it all-in-one, the included software can turn out a great image in a single step.

Summary:
This is the best scanner I have owned for prints, negatives and slides.

My Gear:
Mac Book Pro, 2.66GHz, 4G, OSX 10.5, Photoshop Elements 8, Connect to scanner via firewire 800 to 400 cable.

Experience:
Didn't bother using the included disk and downloaded the driver off the Epson website. The scanner was up and running in less than five minuytes. Most of the five minutes was spent removing the protective packing material.

The print scan went well and the V700 was able to capture detail in the dark/shadow areas of the print that other scanners would usually miss and just leave as blackness. Throughput was good, although I didn't do a timed test. The firewire to Mac connection works great. Overall, I was expecting this to work very well, and it does.

The negative scan blew me away. I expected that the V700 would be better than my previous combo scanners for film due to the testimony of a picky friend of mine who uses it for large format scans. I was not prepared to have a 35mm scan come out so clear and detailed! The ICE feature worked well for my 20 year old negative. You do have to be careful putting the negative into the plastic frame/holder, but the actual scan is great. Also, you can put four negative strips into the frame at one time, which means you can scan up to 16 pictures in a batch. As always, getting rid of dust is an issue, but the results are very good. The film scanning is above my expectations.

Issues:
The only real issues I have, and these are not enough for me to knock off a star, are:
1. The film/slide holders are just a little awkward to load. This is because the catch that keeps them clipped together makes it feel like you are about to break the thing sometimes when you open and close it. So far, no damage, but it just doesn't feel right.
2. The software drivers and plug-in front end are not all that powerful, intuitive or attractive looking. They work well enough, but for something from the might Epson, I would expect the interface to look at least as good as "Vuescan", but it doesn't, and it's harder to use.

That said, the V700 is the way to go. I've used Canon, HP, UMAX, and others. Epson V700 is the one.

This is an awesome piece of equipment. If you scan pictures for Photo Montages or slideshows i recommend you get this scanner. It will as advertised.

My old scanner was not very good. Before getting something that was better, but not good enough I did some homework. The Epson V700 seemed to fit my needs. It received good reviews from more than one source and was reliable.

It took several auctions before I won an Epson V700 for what I perceived a fair price. It was very slightly used and has done what it is supposed to do. Not a lot of scanning done yet, as I'm waiting for the winter months when being inside is necessary. I plan to incrementally scan my old photo and slide collections. Then probably sell the Epson to another.