Epson Perfection V330 LED Photo Scanner (4800dpi)

This is the second scanner I've tried, so I suppose I'm still relatively new to the world of scanning negatives. The first I tried was the super-cheap and absolutely abysmal Veho... STEER CLEAR of that one at all costs. I returned it the day it arrived, and immediately started looking around for higher-spec machines which were still purse-friendly.

When this one arrived I was overjoyed. The build quality is very good, and it filled me with hope. Similarly, on installing the software, I was impressed - very slick and user-friendly.

For the first 36 negs or so, the resulting scans continued this trend. There is a plethora of options in the professional scanning mode so the quality of the scan really is as good as the length of time you're prepared to spend scanning - the higher the resolution the longer the scan takes, clearly.

But (and there's always a but), here comes the reason why this product (which on first impressions was brilliant) received only 2 stars from me. After I'd scanned my first film, I noticed a dark line appearing across the middle of the frame. It's less visible in some frames and appalling visible in others, but it is always there. I googled the problem and found that other people using this scanner and scanning colour negs (mine are all black and white) found a red line appearing, rather than the dark shadowy one I saw. Either way, this appears to be a common issue with the V330.

Luckily, I have Photoshop and these lines are easy enough to edit out, but I only edit the ones which are to be published online - for those of you looking to scan family pictures without the hassle, I'd look for a different scanner.

A second, intermittent problem has also presented itself, but seems to only happen once every ten or so scans. This particular problem sees the 6th frame (the last on the strip being scanned) be cut in half in the 'thumbnail' mode. It's easily resolved, however, by using the 'normal' preview mode to scan.

Finally, the scanner developed a third problem - corrupted images in colour scanning. I contacted Epson directly to see if there were solutions to these problems and whilst first appearing to be helpful, my problems were met with a shrug of the shoulders and I was given advice to return the unit with no indication that a different unit of the same make might be any better.

I returned the scanner and was issued a refund. I now have a Canoscan 9000f which, I must say, is a great deal better, faster, quieter and with much better scan quality to boot, even when comparing scans made at the same resolution (1200 dpi).

I bought this product in preference to a dedicated slide scanner because I thought that at least it would still be useful once I'd finished digitising my slide collection. I was prepared to accept the slower throughput, compared with a dedicated scanner, as long as the image quality was acceptable. In this respect the V330 does not disappoint. All the software installed without problems and the applications I have used so far have been stable running under XP Home Edition SP3. I find inserting and removing slides from the holder slightly fiddly but am getting better with practice. I decided to use a resolution which produces file sizes comparable with a 4 megapixel digital camera and found the image quality to be excellent.
I would have given this product 5 stars but for an annoying failing of the scanning utility: When scanning slides this first executes a Preview scan then displays the slides as a series of thumbnails. The software appears to auto-detect the image area within the mounts and tends to crop out varying amounts of the image in different slides. I suspect that this may happen when the edges of the image are particularly dark, making detection unreliable, although even light areas are cropped slightly. Selecting a thumbnail displays the dimensions of the area to be scanned. It is possible to marquee within this area to further crop the image but there is no facility for forcing the software to scan the whole slide. When I raised this issue with Epson Technical Support they advised me to use Normal, rather then Thumbnail, preview. This displays the entire slide holder and allows a marquee to be drawn around each image. Each area can be individually selected and zoomed (which provokes a further preview scan) after which the marquee can be fine-tuned. The marqueed areas can then be scanned in sequence. The marquee positions are remembered so another four slides can be scanned without the necessity of further previews, however I found that the alignment was a little inconsistent. I chose to overcome this by including part of the slide mount in the marqueed area and then cropping to size whilst cleaning up the images in Photoshop later as this was far quicker than performing multiple zooms and previews.

Good looking, solid robust product.
Easy to load software, easy to follow instructions and simple to use.
I am using it to scan hundreds of old family 35mm slide transparencies in order to archive them and store onto DVDs for future generations.
Does a very good job. Very versatile, full auto modes or lets you touch up and enhance pictures.
Takes approximately 5 minutes to scan and process 4 transparencies.
Also enables you to scan paper photographs and documents producing good images for storage or printing.
In summary I am well pleased with this kit, does a good job at a good price.