Customer Reviews

Epson Perfection V330 LED Photo Scanner (4800dpi)

5 star:		(50)
4 star:		(23)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

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).

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.

Bought this scanner through Amazon and it does exactly what i thought it would do. The photos from the scanned slides are very good quality. I am very pleased with this purchase. Easy to use, it is simple and straightforward. Good value for the money.

Alex

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.

I am very pleased with scanner. Main requirement for me was scanning 35mm film negs and slides. Previously I had used a much more expensive Canon 9900F buth this has no Vista or Winow 7 drivers. The scans by this much cheaper Epson are a much higher quality. The Canon was more versatile with XP as it could scan 24 negs or 16 slides in one go and also large negs up to 5x4 inches but this is academic if it does not work on modern OS. The V330 can scan a strip of 6 negs or 4 slides. But I stress the scans quality much bettr on Epson.

I had been copying slides and negs off cheap light box with my Nikon D90 with Sigma EX 105mm macro lens, but these were much poorer than the scans with Epson.

I put the neg/slides in, let it use all defaults with a small amount of sharpening and close the lid and let it roll. At 2400 dpi it takes about 10 minutes, so I do this as a background task while I do something else.

Strange over the years I have switched from Canon scanners to Epson whereas for printers I have done the reverse.

I am more than pleased with the Epson V330 LED scanner, the quality of reprodution of my 55 year old colour slides has to be seen to be believed, they are absolutely amazing. All scanning of photographs and documents are also first class, in my opinion this is a fantastic product for the price.

after using a epson scanner for the last 6 yrs regular, i was beginning to have mechanical problems & error messages, nowing the cost of repair i decided to check out a new one.
i did not hesitate in purchasing another of the same brand. on receiving the newer model i did wonder of the quality, smaller & lighter, i needn,t have done, if anything, i have gained a better scanner (higher dpi) at half the price i originally paid, sometime technology is in favour of the consumer.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with the scanner - it works fine with very good results. My problem is with Epson. The scanner arrived very promptly on 1.3.11 - I think it was ordered the day before. However when I came to use it I could not get it to work - I couldn't download the software either off the disc or off the internet. I took it to my local Epson agent as per the warranty terms & they diagnosed the problem almost straight away & said that it needed a new power supply, & I had a choice of sending it back to Amazon or they would get one from Epson, I chose the latter. Six weeks later I got the scanner back & it now works. But surely waiting for six weeks to get a replacement part is a bit too much..........

I got this scanner about a month ago, and have rather rapidly been disappointed by it. Being quite time-poor these days, I did the best research I could before making my purchase. Perhaps I was using the wrong search terms online and on Amazon itself ('120/medium format film scanner', if you're wondering) because this particular one was listed, even though on the troubleshooting FAQ page, they specifically say "Film larger than 35 mm (such as Medium Format or 4 x 5-inch size films) cannot be scanned."

Despite the obvious setbacks, I have successfully scanned a number of my negatives and the resulting images have been pretty much what I was hoping for. However, the scanner has developed a habit of giving me, as a preview image, a rectangle of rainbow colours. That would be fine if I took photos of rainbows or psychedelic trips, but not so much black and white architerctural shots. The last successful scan (by successful, I mean that it produced recognisable images) left distinct lines across all the images.

I'm somewhat disappointed with the whole thing, especially as it's probably just past the time limit for Amazon's returns period. I'll be attempting to recoup some my losses by selling it on Gumtree, and looking for a scanner that will both scan medium format film *and* the actual images in the scanner.

Good scanner so far, gives nice clean scans and is just what I wanted. Very good for the price. It isn't the fastest, but I wasn't expecting it to be.

It was quick to install, but maybe I should've taken a bit more time with the software, which has unfortunately slowed down my PC as it now takes longer to fire up when I switch on. I will have to spend some time changing back a number of settings, such removing it from the start up menu and changing back the photo viewer which now defaults to ArcSoft.

As always, can't fault Amazon's delivery times, excellent service.

Probably should give it 5 stars, and deliberated over this, it's probably my fault for not customising the settings when loading the software, but not everyone feels sure of doing this.