Introduction

I had been looking for a simple and easy to use scanner to finally replace my trusty old Phantom E3 for some while. Since I also happen to have a huge collection of old 35 mm slides, I thought that it would be a great opportunity to once and for all transfer those old slides to the digital domain and was looking for a scanner with transparency scanning capabilities.

The shop gave me the opportunity to take a number of scanners for a test purchase to try to figure out which one would suit my needs the best - namely the HP DeskScan 3570C, the Canon CanoScan 5000F and the Epson Perfection 2400.

The Epson Perfection 2400 is unarguably the most expensive one of these three scanners, but when it comes to user friendliness and output quality, the Epson simply wiped away all competition and quickly dismissed the other two scanners back to the shop.

Installation

Unpacking and installing the scanner was easy, but there were a mass of blue packaging tape to be removed and also a locking device to unlock - easy to miss! I installed the Epson software from one of the CD's in the package (there are a bunch of CD's in various languages), plugged in the power and the provided USB cable and I was immediately set. I don't know how well the scanner behaves for Macintosh systems, but Windows XP Professional had no trouble at all with installing the software and gave me no problems whatsoever. USB 2.0 is supported, and also USB 1.1 for older computers.

The scanner has no "off" switch, which means that it is constantly turned on. It's a bit strange but seems to be the case for all other scanners I have been testing, I don't quite know why... The lamp is automatically switched off after a few minutes if not in use, so I suppose it is not a big deal.

The Epson Perfection 2400 is thick, looks very sturdy and robust - quite frankly even a bit ugly. It lacks the elegant design of the sleek CanoScan 5000F and the pretty holographic lid of the HP ScanJet 3570C. The dark gray color scheme gives it a rather military rugged appearance and I am sure the Epson will never win a beauty contest for imaging devices, should somebody come up with such a bizarre idea. But scanners should not be judged by their desktop appearance, and as soon as you start using the Epson Perfection 2400, you will quickly realize that this scanner doesn't need clever design or sex appeal to impress.

The software

The scanning software is initiated from the Scan button on the front panel scanner, or by simply double-clicking on the corresponding icon in Windows. On startup it will present you with a number of scan options, such as scanning to a file, scanning to an application, scanning to email or scanning directly to printer (Epson printers being the preferred printers of choice of course).

The scanning software may not be the most intuitive one I have ever seen, but is quite easy to use, at least if you have some previous experience with similar software. Unfortunately I have noticed a few strange quirks and bugs, making it less than perfect. The most annoying bug has to do with the part of the software that takes scanned slides or negatives and separates the individual images into separate files. It does a great job most of the time, but sometimes the software interprets something in the image as the border of the slide and crops it incorrectly, sometimes cutting away half the actual photo. It's not really a big issue as it is very obvious in the preview pane. The remedy is simply to flip the slide 90 degrees to one side and redo the preview. Once the previews look okay, the actual scan will not recrop the image so you can safely hit the scan button and get yourself a cup of tea.

A potentially more dangerous hiccup occurs if you manually delete or move any of temporary image files that are created inside the (hidden) Epson folder. This will cause the entire scanning application to crash as it tries to show all scanned files, instead of handling the unexpected situation in a more graceful way. What is even worse, is when the scanning application crashes, it will delete all the temporary scanned images inside the Epson folder without giving the user a chance to save them. Well, you can still move them manually to another location and thereby saving them while the error message is being displayed, but as soon as you click OK, your images will be permanently lost. This is not likely to occur as long as you are using the application as it is intended to be used, but it is always a sign of weak programming when a piece of software cannot handle an unexpected situation without actually deleting the user's data.

Let's make some scans!

Scanning a photo in full automatic mode gave a totally identical image with no visible degradation whatsoever - but I wasn't expecting anything else from this scanner. So instead I went for the more challenging task of scanning film slides and negatives.

To scan slides or negatives, you first need to remove the reflective sheet from the lid, which will reveal an extra backlight strip built in the lid itself. To help positioning the slides or negatives, Epson provides a simple plastic holder that is placed on the scanning glass. There are slots for four slides or a strip of negative film (six negatives). The manual - er, leaflet - doesn't give much help with this, but you will figure it out pretty soon anyway.

Being a total control freak, I immediately set the scan options to Manual (automatic mode apparently doesn't use the highest available resolution), selected positive film as image source and went straight for the maximal optical resolution of 2400 dpi to see what this baby was capable of.

I hit the preview button, which quickly showed the four slides, nicely separated as four separate images. They looked pretty good to me as they were, so I clicked on the scan button.

Scanning the four slides went surprisingly fast and after a few minutes I could store the images on my hard drive for a closer inspection. The scanner comes bundled with Adobe Photoshop Elements, but being an avid Photoshop user, I opened the images in Photoshop instead.

Scan quality

I was immediately blown away with how well the scanner managed to capture the smallest details and nuances of the original. Focus, brightness, contrast, hue and saturation appeared to be right on the spot. Comparing the scanned image on the screen with the original slide being projected with a projector showed virtually no difference whatsoever, but owners of more sophisticated slide projectors will probably be able to see some slight detail degradation. For me, the possibility to touch up and balance the images in the computer makes up for a minor loss of detail any time, not to mention being able to store, copy and print out the photos on my printer.

By the way, if you intend to use the scanner for a lot of film scanning, a CD-burner is strongly recommended - one scanned slide or negative with 2400 dpi resolution will take up around 18 MB of disk space (in uncompressed format)!

Next I scanned a strip of negative film. This works pretty much the same way as scanning slides, but takes twice as long (approximately six-seven minutes for a strip of negatives). The results are again sharp and perfectly matching the original - or at least as perfect as it is possible on any flatbed scanner.

There were a number of dust specks on the images (turning up as white dots), but it should be kept in mind that the scanner uses a pretty high magnification level to blow up a 35 mm image to a large photo, and even the tiniest dust specks and fabric strands will appear as dark (or white on negatives) blobs or streaks.

The Perfection 2400 has no built-in scratch and dust removal facilities as found in more expensive scanners, so make sure to keep the originals and the scanning glass as clean and dustfree as possible, or you will have a hard time stomping those specks away in your fave image processing program. Also take great care in not scratching the scanner glass tray with a sharp object or by anything even remotely abrasive. Handle the glass tray as you would treat the glass surface of any optical instrument such as a camera lens, and you will be rewarded with crystal clear images a long time to come.

The maximal horisontal resolution of the scanner is 2400 dpi, which is a very respectable amount in itself, but the Epson Perfection 2400 is also equipped with a very high quality sensor unit, and is in theory capable of capturing the entire range of a decent 35 mm camera.

Conclusion

Although there are a few flatbed scanners with higher resolutions available (like Epson's own Perfection 3200), a higher resolution in itself is not necessarily enough to yield a sharper image. As long as there is a glass tray between the optical sensor and the images and no continuous focus adjustment mechanism to follow the slightest curves of the original film (to mention a few aspects), a flatbed scanner can never rival dedicated photo scanners - which incidentally are also vastly more expensive.

The Perfection 2400 is an excellent imaging device and it can easily handle all domestic image digitizing needs you might have. It may cost a little more than most other 2400 dpi scanners, but image quality doesn't come cheap and once you have used the Epson Perfection 2400, you will know where your money went.



Recommended: Yes

Amount Paid (US$): 250
Interface: USB