I recently purchased an Epson 1260 Perfection scanner, with film attachment, to replace a Canon 1260U that died. Actually, I also had a Nikon Coolscan II Film scanner that cost about $1200 maybe 5 years ago, to give you an idea of how much I want my pics to look good.

I'm something of a film buff. I purchased the Nikon scanner because it was the best available at the time and it did a very good job. But, after so many years, it's hard to find the right drivers and software for Windows XP. When my cheapo Canon scanner just died, I started looking for a new flatbed. When I saw the Epson included a film option and USB 2.0, I was delighted.

My experience with Epson products has been their color/photo printers. Basically, they work very well, are very cheap, and they die. But, being so cheap, it's ok to replace them every couple years. I could almost say it's cheaper to buy a new printer, than an ink cartridge. So, at about $150 at Staples with a rebate to about $130, it seemed a decent deal.

The Epson installs a ton of software, including ArcSoft PhotoImpression as the main capture/view/scan software. The software worked in a 'skinz' style, and is relatively easy to use. There is no printed manual however, and a User Manual is installed on the PC as a set of HTML documents. I would prefer a printed manual.

The scanner has an optical resolution of upto 1200x2400, which is pretty decent, and should be fine for just about anything. This is great output for just about anything, and gives you some elbow room as well. The reason it isn't overkill, is that you can do things like take a 5x7 photo, scan it, crop it down some, and then blow it up to an 8x10, with good results (assuming the photo was good to begin with). The maximum resolution using interpolating (a software trick) is 9600x9600.

You really need to keep resolution in check though, and understand how you are going to use it. For example, let's say you scan a photo in at 1200x1200 DPI resolution. That means, 1200 dots or pixels per inch. Now, if you wanted to put the scanned image on the web, for on-screen viewing, keep in mind that a users computer is typically using an 800x600 of 1024x768 screen resolution. This means that just 1" of your photo will *more* than fill up the entire users screen. You can of course lower the resolution, or use software to reduce the image size.

Resolutions this high, are really intended for printing, and also give you some extra leg room, like in cropping the image (maybe the only good part of the photo is 1/2" in size!). With many color printers today, resolutions of 2880 DPI isn't uncommon. The fact that the printer has a higher resolution than the scanner isn't as bad as it sounds though, because of how ink is laid down, so 1200 DPI of the scanner is still plenty.

So, the scanning software is alot, but basically nice to use. The scanner itself is fine, and worked without a hitch, though it has a long 'warm up' time of maybe 50 seconds, that is a drag. Scanned photos, look great right off the bat. The scanner also has the ability to automatically identify the image area of what you are scanning, which was a downfall later.

I then turned my attention to the film scanning. Actually, I use slide film, so I tried that. My first test slide upset me horribly. I had to search the manual to find out that I had to use the 'Manual' mode to do my scan, but after a few minutes I figured out what I needed to do. But, every time I tried to scan the slide, it kept saying there was no film.

I checked everything, and double checked, and finally used a different, brighter slide. Sure enough, it worked like a charm. Tried some more darker slides, and they all failed. After trying out everything I can think of, I finally came to the conclusion that the scanner simply will not work with dark slides.

What irked me was that I was in 'Manual' mode, where I should have had full control. I would think in this mode, that I could make a scan anyway, and try to deal with a dark image. But, even in manual mode the scanner tries to find the film itself on the flatbed, and if it doesn't recognize a slide, it simply gives up and you can't scan anything. I don't really see a point to a manual mode, if it automatically decides a slide isn't there.

As a side note, my photos tend to be under-exposed, as I like that effect. This means that many of them are darker than normal. I don't think I'll be using this thing much for slides.

Even the bright slides, which are sharply focused, resulted in poor quality when printed at 8"x10" size. The 1200 DPI optical resolution just isn't good enough for this type of work (in my opinion). The 9600 DPI resolution is interpolated, which means it's ok, but it's really a software trick, and yields poorer quality than a true 9600 DPI optical rating.

So, if you want to scan images for the web, your desktop, do some cropping, print 5x7 photos at 8x10, or make wallets and smaller prints, then it's a decent piece of hardware. If you are very picky of 8x10 print quality, or intend to use it for slide scanning and printing, I really can't recommend it.

Now, for the price (between $90 and $140), it's a decent deal, and a good choice for most. Just don't expect fantastic flexibility and film scanning quality. I'll give it an Above Average rating, because I think for all but the pickiest people, they will be quite happy with it.

As a side note, I can't say for sure if this is the cause, but soon after installing all the Epson software and drivers, I started to get a couple printing errors on my HP PhotoSmart 1215, which I had never seen before. I'm running on Windows XP Pro.

Recommended: Yes

Amount Paid (US$): 129
Interface: USB