Epson V700 Scanner

I just had a look today at prices for this scanner and they vary from £300 on Amazon to £450+ on Warehouse Express!!!!

Does anyone know why this might be? Is it that there's a newer version and the circa £300 units are clearance stock?

I can't imagine this is the case as I'm sure Epson would release it as a new model (V800?) rather than an updated V700!?!?!

 

Almost since it came out there have seemed to be massive differences in price.

Also bear in mind there is the Very similar (identical looking) v750 (basically the same scanner but with wet mounting capability)

 

I know about the V750, but current pricing:

Amazon.co.uk

V700 - £305
V750 - £449

Warehouse Express

V700 - £469
V750 - £626

Admittedly Amazon do have an RRP of £399 for the V700, but still £160+ saving is pretty huge and it must indicate what kind of margin WE are making on these units!?!?

 

It was ordered from Amazon and I'm just doing my first batch of 12 35mm colour slides at 4800dpi with 'fast' Digital ICE turned on, total scan time circa 75mins!!!! I'll post up some of the output when it's done....

 

They do take a while to scan, but I like that as it's a flatbed you can set up a load and just leave it to it - with my old film scanner I had to manually feed each frame in... and the quality was mank too! Much better on the V700 even though I've yet to master adjusting the scans to get the best results.

 

Ok, here's a sample scan, 4800dpi, no sharpening and a 'Quality' digital ICE pass:

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3344/3236271901_3c1016f948_o.jpg

And a 100% crop:

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3365/3237115648_c573456f85_o.jpg

The Digital ICE has gotten a bit confused here hence the strange 'artifacts' all around the wiper etc...

 

Yeah the edges look a little funny there, but it's at least kept the weird look very small so it's not very noticeable unless you look closely. Must admit I don't use ICE on mine, I tend to touch up by hand. I've not used my V700 since last Summer, still haven't got around to setting it up on the PC I built in the Summer... really must do that! I think I've still got some negatives to scan from a walk around Flatford, plus I still have lots and lots of old negs and slides to scan from the '90s.

Although I'm not very consistent with the quality of my processing this should give an idea of the quality you can expect from it with little experience but far from being an expert!


A BIG version can be seen here.

I did remove wires running across the sign using Photoshop Elements 3 though - I thought that worked out fairly well!

I have real problems trying to correct colours with some scans though, I'm still learning how to sort out the best ways to achieve correct colour balance and removing the colour casts from negatives. This one I've probably processed from scratch at least 3 or 4 times and still the colours look wrong, but it's a learning experience and I'll get there in the end:

 

Same here, I do all sharpening and dust removal in PhotoShop. The problem with the scanner software is that the information you lose when using ICE etc cannot be reclaimed. It can be handy for a quick job when quality and or final image size isn't too great. The V700 is a pretty good and versatile scanner though.

 

On the other hand I believe that a qualiy scanner will use infra red in order to assist in scratch and dust removal - so scan time removal might be the best option.

 

Removing traces of scratches and dust at the scanning stage should be the best way of doing things and if you have practical experience of a scanner which does this without losing image quality do tell us what it is, and also if it works when scanning Kodachrome trannies. It certainly isn't the case for the v700 scanner under discussion. Alas, the theory and the practice don't always coincide in photography.

 

Epson use an infra red based Digital ICE technology on the V700 and V750, comparing the IR scan to the normal and removing any blemishes, filling in the gaps with information from around the location.

How good it the results are is down to personal preference, but if you're scanning hundreds of slides/negatives do you really want to painstakingly work through each one in PhotoShop?

A good blast with compressed air/gentle wipe with a dusting brush will dislodge most dust leaving just the really stubborn bits....

 

If you are having issues with colour casts and scanning colour negs then I would definitely recommend trying the colorneg plugin: C F Systems Innovations in Sight and Sound - Photoshop plug-ins page

It actually properly removes the orange mask from the scan rather than just fudging it like other software tries to