Market Trade @ Home Blogs

epson 300 photo scanner
I bought this to scan a great deal of slides. I use this scanner nonstop, from morning to night. It is the best scanner I have ever bought. It works with both xp and vista. It is quiet, a lot of times I don't hear it when it gets done so I have to keep tabs on the screen. I am very happy that it scans like it should, I have had no problems with it. I haven't done negatives yet but I have done pictures and the quality of both the slides and pic's turned out great. It does take longer with higher dpi but I organize in between. I have scanned well over 1500 slides and still going. It doesn't come with a physical direction book, that is on the disk when you load it. I would rather have a book. All in all this is a great scanner and I would recommend it to friends.

Great for scanning film!!
Basically, im rating/reviewing based on the film scanning feature. I've used other Epson scanners for film and the results were not always great. I've used a Plustek scanner, and ofcourse the results are top professional quality. However, after using the Epson V300, I'd say this scanner works just as good as a Plustek scanner. It scans negatives in under a minute, using the professional mode, your able to get accurate color results. Even though the images dont come out as sharp like the Plustek does, I was still very impressed with results. I'll be using this scanner for a very long time. I'm a very happy customer! :)

very good consumer grade scanner
Very high quality output for the money. Construction is only consumer grade, however, so don't plan to bang it around or frequently move it from place to place without consequences. Not the type of scanner you would want in a busy office or other high traffic operation. Perfect though for personal use, and very economical. High quality scans of 35mm negatives, photos, drawings, and objects. Have not tried it with slides yet, but I assume the results will be similar to film. Software is light and useful.

Probably Okay
For 120/220 film negatives you might want to think about something else. Although I'm not sure what if you are on a budget. And that's how I wound up with this product. Decent price, and the scans look good off of negatives and transparencies. Now, here's the problem: The scanning mask for negatives is not sufficiently large to handle 6x6 cm negatives ("two and a quarter square")in strips of four. A fairly common way of filing these back in the old days that fit a 12-shot roll on to an 8x10 inch contact sheet.

Looks like 6x7 cm will fit okay in threes. A few scans of these look good although the default scanner settings breaks them up into oddly chopped image pieces. One day soon I'll have a look at the rest of the software controls and settings to see if there's a way to make what I'm doing the default.

Scans from slides and prints look good. Didn't scan any transparency film (Fujichrome, Kodachrome, and the like)in uncut strips.

I got more or less what I expected because my selection was limited by price.

great scanner
Bought this for my wife and daughter to use. My wife is saving and repairing old family photos My daughter is a professional photographer with a home studio. I set it up and scanned the first photos. The first time I used it I took 3 or 4 try's messing around with the settings to see what they did to get a scan that I wanted. After that it was very easy. It works with windows xp and vista with out problems. It creates great scans and is faster than other photo scanners I have used. The ICE software works better than I expected, which can save considerable time when working with old photos. My only complaint is, why ship with last years photo shop elements when any one that uses elements regularly probably has upgraded any way.

Nice Scanner
I was forced to buy a new scanner because the Hewlett-Packard 5590 I was using self-destructed right after the warranty expired, and I received absolutely no consideration from HP. They charged me to do an online diagnostic, and told me the 5590 was not fixable. I had only given it very light use, too. So, I swore never to buy anything from HP again, and after checking everything out there, I bought the Epson Perfection V600, and I am pleased with it. My only complaint is that the documentation is rather limited, and you have to figure out certain functions intuitively. I have used scanners for many years, so that wasn't a problem for me. (I still have a perfectly good HP 2CX scanner which I updated when I connected it to an at the time new, but now old Windows 98 computer. It works fine but HP stopped updating the software for it to work with newer computers and newer versions of Windows). The setup for the Epson Perfection V600 is very simple--just plug it in, after first installing the software. I can't comment on its durability because it is new, and after my Hewlett-Packard experience, you can imagine my reluctance to commit to a durability rating on any product that is new.

Sweet Machine
I was using an old Microtek scanner attached to a Mac OS 9 machine. The old scanner was dying and I had upgraded to OS X throughout the house. So, I thought it was time to upgrade the scanner as well. I bought this Epson scanner for the primary purpose of scanning text documents although the idea of scanning some of my photographs from years gone by was attactive as well. SO far, I've only used the scanner for text documents; it has worked flawlessly - super fast and nearly automatic. A push of a button on the scanner and a click of teh mouse and I have a document that is immediately useful. At this point, I give this machine the highest rating. Can't comment about photos yet.

Amazing product; impressive results
An amazing product, easy to use with impressive results. The ability to individual adjust the scanning properties of each slide/negative allows customization to yield excellent outcomes. Plus it is fast. More effort than sending your slides off to be processed, but a lot more control over the quality of the final product. Highly recommended.

great scanner
Bottom line; I am not a professional photographer. I wanted a scanner to digitalize slides, photos, and negatives. The V500 seems to do that. I loaded the Silverfast dvd and it seems over my head at this time. Any enhancing of the photos I do with iPhoto and that seems to work at this time. Maybe in the future I will use Silverfast.

I have found that sometimes photos age better than negatives and slides.

I am having fun learning to digitalize.

The V700 is doing well by me. A good investment.

Good value High Learning Curve for a Post-Film Era Film Scanner
As film has rapidly fallen into disfavor, film scanners have been more difficult to find. As a semi-professional photographer for over 15 years, I have thousands of 35mm transparencies that still have value as long as I can scan and digitize them in marketable quality.

Previously I owned two Konica-Minolta film scanners. They were small enough to fit unobtrusively in my workspace, and I loved their ease of use and intuitive software. However, since that company left the photography market several years ago, they no longer support their scanners, and the driver and other software is not compatible with Windows 7...meaning I was forced to find a new replacement. I was amazed by how few options there are. Nikon makes a scanner of small size but it retails for over 00.

After some research this Epson Scanner looked like one of my only options. The price (~0) was right, and I've always been a fan of other Epson products (esp. printers). Nevertheless this product has three drawbacks worth considering...

First, because it is a flatbed, it is ENORMOUS. Sure, I was aware of the dimensions when I ordered it, and sure, it will scan twelve slides at once, but I would gladly sacrifice the volume/productivity for a "feed-through" style scanner capable of producing high-quality scans while taking up a third of the worksspace of this scanner.

Second drawback is, again, that this is a flatbed scanner. My initial skepticism (that it would be able to produce sharp scans of high detail and good dynamic range) has passed, and the scans I have made so far are great. However, the flatbed itself is kind of a pain. The twelve-slide bracket snaps in to the roof of the scanner, and it a little bit of a pain. Also, b/c it is a flatbed, and there is a gap between the bed and the roof, I think this scanner will be prone to lots of dust and debris getting into it, and it will require frequent cleaning.

Finally, I'm (at least initially) impressed with neither the Epson driver/scanning software nor the "SilverFast" productivity software that came with the scanner. Neither are very intuitive, and while I'm learning to use it, and producing some good scans, there have been some tough times. Both of these programs are too loaded with featurs. I liked Konica Minolta's simple software which allowed the user to make some basic pre-scan/exposure corrections, befroe taking the images into Photoshop to do the heavy-duty post production work.

In general, it's too soon (only a month) for me to wholeheartedly endorse this scanner...but on the other hand, there are few affordable options that render similar marketable quality. I'll probably need to pick up the pace in the next few years and scan as many of my old slides as possible with this scanner, because I suspect film scanners will soon be very rare beasts.