Used $50 Epson V330 (4800 x 9600) vs New $220 V600 (6400 x 9600) for family slides/negs?

[Ryan_N]

Hi folks,
My question is basically in the subject line. I have a slew of prints, negatives and slides, all of them family photos, to scan.

I just wondered how much improvement I'd get by spending another $150 for an Epson V600. Is there more going on than DPI increase? Backlight? Software?

I want to do this properly but also don't want to spend extra money if a used V330 would get the job done just fine.

Thanks in advance for your thoughts!

 

[MattKing]

Welcome to Photrio.
The Epson 330 is a document only scanner. It is not equipped to scan transparent media such as negatives or slides.
Good luck with your quest.

 

[AndyH]

Adorama had several factory refurbished models for sale earlier in the week. I bought a V550 for $119, and IIRC they had a V600 for around $150. I'm looking forward to its arrival tomorrow.

Andy

 

[Ryan_N]

The Epson 330 is a document only scanner.

The Epson 330 is a document only scanner

GLAD I asked. Thanks Matt. I feel like a moron for not spotting this when I downloaded its spec sheet this morning. Cheers!

 

[Ryan_N]

Adorama had several factory refurbished models for sale earlier in the week. I bought a V550 for $119, and IIRC they had a V600 for around $150. I'm looking forward to its arrival tomorrow.

Andy

Andy, thanks for heads up! Taking a look there now thanks to your tip.

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

The V600 can fix cracks, minor tears and discolorations on prints. It can restore faded colors to both prints and slides. It also gets rid of 80-90% of dust on your slides saving time spotting them out afterwards.

It's very laborious to do scanning and post editing. Do you need to scan all of them? Or are many things like vacation shots where you can save and scan a few good ones from each set? Depending on the quantity, you may find in cheaper to have a service do the scanning for you. That will save your time and your sanity. I know. Believe me.

Here are my scan of 35mm slides using the V600. Once you get a scanner, if that's the way you're going, let us know and we'll give you some tips on scanning then. Good luck.
https://www.flickr.com/search/?sort...h=1&tags=35mm&user_id=55760757@N05&view_all=1

 

[runswithsizzers]

You don't say what size negatives, but you use the words "family slides" which suggests 35mm film, right?

While I have never used a flatbed scanner for 35mm film, from what I've read, the higher end flatbeds do an excellent job with medium format and are pretty good for 35mm. But I would look at alternative methods (digital camera, film scanner) before I would try to use an entry level flatbed scanner for 35mm film.

In addition to optical resolution, something to consider when scanning slides is the difficulty of capturing shadow detail. The darkest parts of a slide are usually darker than the darkest part of a negative. Some scanners which do a pretty good job of scanning negative film have difficulty in picking up details in the dark areas of slides. Look in the specifications for something called DMax which is an indication of how well the scanner can deal with dense film. For example, Epson's webpages show both the <Perfection V550> and the <Perfection V600> have the same Optical Density of 3.4 Dmax. The <V800> is showing the Optical Density as 4.0 Dmax. The webpage for the entry level <Epson Perfection V370> does not list any Optical Density specification, which makes me suspect it may not be as good as the mid-range models (just guessing). For prints and negatives, the Dmax spec wont matter much, but for transparencies, it might, especially if they are underexposed.

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

He said he didn't want to spend more than $200. The V800 or V850 are very good units, but over $800. Setting up DSLR scanning is very expensive too.

As an aside, I display my 35mm slides scanned with the V600 at full resolution of 3840x2160 on my 75" UHDTV, and they're very good. The TV presents great slideshows, I think better than original projector method. Slide screens reflect light while TV's emanate light adding to their brightness and contrast. Tv slide shows are also more convenient. I put mine on a memory card that plugs into the TV's USB drive. Displays on smaller desktop monitors are excellent as well.

If you want to see one of them, here's a slide show I dumped on Youtube. You can play it on your smart TV or desktop. It's not the best of my slides as it was the first set I scanned. But it will give you an idea of what you can get. The stills were made into a video so I can show it on Youtube and as a video on my TV. But they all were from 30 year old Ektachrome slides originally.

 

[Ryan_N]

Do you need to scan all of them?

Hi Alan,
To answer your question: I do indeed -- it's going to take forever. There are thousands or possibly tens of thousands of images -- a terrifying thought, and a multi-year project that will not be occupying my free time whenever it's available. My first round was 8MM video and VHS home movies, which I contracted out -- splitting the load between ScanCafe and iMovie, then did post myself in Premiere Pro. That project is 100% finished except for a small set of 8MM films that will require a TON of work; almost frame-by-frame.

At $220 all-in on Amazon, the V600 is affordable and seemingly worth it, given my load.

I'm a metadata geek and will be much more focused on capturing everything and getting it into a decidaden hard-drive and cloud drive with metadata for each image as a first round operation. I'll probably use Bridge or LR for this but open to suggestions.

The film is almost exclusively from Dale Labs. My late grandfather was an avid amateur photographer -- his collection, as best I know, is ALL slides after about 1960. Before that time, it was all prints. He shot his life from high school to nearly his death -- pretty remarkable, as he and my late grandmother spent retirement traveling the world. They were 40 stories up, in Istanbul, when the 1995 earthquake struck. My grandmother was bouncing off walls, literally -- my grandfather was searching for camera lenses!

My mom inherited his old cameras. She also used Dale Labs and ordered prints and slides (prints came with negatives). My challenge with my mom's stuff is that I can't determine duplicates in all cases. Some print envelopes only have negatives in them, for example. It's easier to just scan it all, I think.

Glad I found this forum. You guys will prove to be an indispensable resource as I embark on this dozie.

 

[Ryan_N]

35mm film, right

Affirmative. I don't have a budget on scanner but also don't want to go overboard on a scanner -- if I'm stuck making adjustments in post no matter what anyway. My hope has been that a flatbed approach would allow me to scan more images at once. Yes? Looking at trays/holders form betterscanning.com based on recommendations I see here.

As for the shadow and color contrast issue; I resolve to color-correcting a very large portion of the slides myself. Can I assume this physical-degration issue isn't improved by scanner-type very much? As long as all the information is captured, I don't mind tweaking in Adobe.

 

[Ryan_N]

@Alan Edward Klein just saw your scanned/converted scuba pics, which look great! This is me in Sharm el Sheikh, 2008 -- on military active duty, lol. This was a very strenuous deployment involving recreational offshore diving safaris nearly every day. Or golf

 

[mgb74]

"There are thousands or possibly tens of thousands of images"

You better hope this forced isolation lasts for 2-3 years if you plan to do those on a flat bed scanner. My V550 does 4 slides at a time. If you get a second holder (so you can load one while the other is being scanned) you can reduce that to 1-2 years.

OK, maybe a bit of hyperbole. But when I had a few hundred to scan I bought a used Nikon Coolscan 5000. I planned to sell it off after doing the slides, but decided to keep it. A dedicated film scanner is the way to go. Alternatively, but not without it's drawbacks, are the slide scanning services. Some are US based and I believe some ship the film/slides overseas.

You also need to decide the resolution you want to scan at and it's implications for time and storage. That somewhat depends of how you plan to use the scans, which may be unknowable at this point in time. Finally, don't believe the published specs for scanners.

 

[Ryan_N]

A dedicated film scanner is the way to go

May I ask what the advantage is? Is it speed or something else? The price disparity between a used Coolscan 5000, and a new Epson flat-bed, is massive. If a dedicated film scanner truly does have a benefit on the end result, I then start to wonder if I'd be best to just send all negatives that have a guaranteed duplicate, in print or slides, to India (ScanCafe).

So much to consider -- to include resolution. Data is cheap, in general, so I'll probably want to scan at high resolution to 250GB thumb drives that will end up in a small fire-proof box when finished, and replicated on an online service for all to enjoy, i.e. Flikr.

 

[runswithsizzers]

He said he didn't want to spend more than $200. The V800 or V850 are very good units, but over $800. Setting up DSLR scanning is very expensive too.

As an aside, I display my 35mm slides scanned with the V600 at full resolution of 3840x2160 on my 75" UHDTV, and they're very good. The TV presents great slideshows, I think better than original projector method. Slide screens reflect light while TV's emanate light adding to their brightness and contrast. Tv slide shows are also more convenient. I put mine on a memory card that plugs into the TV's USB drive. Displays on smaller desktop monitors are excellent as well.

If you want to see one of them, here's a slide show I dumped on Youtube. You can play it on your smart TV or desktop. It's not the best of my slides as it was the first set I scanned. But it will give you an idea of what you can get. The stills were made into a video so I can show it on Youtube and as a video on my TV. But they all were from 30 year old Ektachrome slides originally.

If that is a reply to my post, the point I was trying to make was not that the OP needs to buy an Epson V800 - but rather to investigate other possibilities before buying an entry level V3xx series. From what I've seen, results from the Epson V500/600 flatbeds are pretty good, but what I don't know is if the V3xx scans are comparable in quality.

From personal experience, I know this - IF a person already has an acceptable digital camera, the additional parts needed to copy film can be bought for less than $200. Of course, not every one does have an interchangeable lens digital camera, nor does everyone want to make the effort to assemble what is needed to build a diy film copy rig. But if one does, I believe most digital cameras plus $100-$200 of eBay parts will produce better digital copies of your film than many (most?) flatbed scanners selling for <$200.

Some examples of slides copied with my $40 enlarger lens, $65 bellows, a $20 adapter, and a $40 LED light source <here>

I believe the digital camera method is similar in quality to the higher end flatbed scanners, is faster than any dedicated film scanner that does not have batch loading*, and it avoids scanner software/driver compatability issues. (* even if your film scanner can batch scan a stack of slides, scanning negatives and prints are still going to be hands-on)

One area where the flatbed scanner or film scanner *MAY* be superior to the digital camera method is IF you want to scan a lot of color negatives, and IF the sofware that came with the scanner does a satisfactory job of inverting and color correcting color negatives. Those using a digital camera to copy color negatives may find this step to be challenging and may want to consider third party software to help with this step. But so will those who bought a flatbed/film scanner and then discover the scanner software has a clunky interface, does a poor job, or quits working when you upgrade your system software.

 

[shutterfinger]

Epson V500, V550, V600 are very similar. Their drawback is they will only scan 2 strips of 35mm film, 4 slides or 2 to 3 120 negatives at a time. I have a low usage V500 I bought new that I wil llet go, original box, packing, film holders.
The V700 on the other hand has a larger transparency scan area and can be picked up used. It will scan 4 strips of 35mm negatives or 12 slides per holder load. I not willing to sell mine at this time.
The V500, V550, V600 use a LED light source; the V700/V750 uses a cold cathode florescent light source.
Good scanning is like good photography, it has a learning curve. I scan with all corrections turned off and correct/edit in Photoshop.
V600 at B&H $229; V550 $199 https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/search?Ntt=epson perfection v600&N=0&InitialSearch=yes&sts=ps
V600 at Adorama $219; refurbished $159 with free shipping on either which should be back in stock in a few days. https://www.adorama.com/l/?searchinfo=epson+v600

 

[PhilBurton]

"There are thousands or possibly tens of thousands of images"

You better hope this forced isolation lasts for 2-3 years if you plan to do those on a flat bed scanner. My V550 does 4 slides at a time. If you get a second holder (so you can load one while the other is being scanned) you can reduce that to 1-2 years.

OK, maybe a bit of hyperbole. But when I had a few hundred to scan I bought a used Nikon Coolscan 5000. I planned to sell it off after doing the slides, but decided to keep it. A dedicated film scanner is the way to go. Alternatively, but not without it's drawbacks, are the slide scanning services. Some are US based and I believe some ship the film/slides overseas.

You also need to decide the resolution you want to scan at and it's implications for time and storage. That somewhat depends of how you plan to use the scans, which may be unknowable at this point in time. Finally, don't believe the published specs for scanners.

The Nikon Coolscan 5000 also can use the Nikon SF-210 slide batch feeder, which can do up to 50 slides at one time. That may be your best bet.

Phil

 

[mgb74]

May I ask what the advantage is? Is it speed or something else? The price disparity between a used Coolscan 5000, and a new Epson flat-bed, is massive. If a dedicated film scanner truly does have a benefit on the end result, I then start to wonder if I'd be best to just send all negatives that have a guaranteed duplicate, in print or slides, to India (ScanCafe).

So much to consider -- to include resolution. Data is cheap, in general, so I'll probably want to scan at high resolution to 250GB thumb drives that will end up in a small fire-proof box when finished, and replicated on an online service for all to enjoy, i.e. Flikr.

Both quality and speed. It's not just the actual scanning speed you have to consider, but the time it takes to handle each slide.

Your scans will likely be 5-30mb each depending on resolution and format (jpeg or tiff). Do the math - that's a lot of 250mb thumbdrives. 1,000 scans at 10mb each will be about 40 of those thumbdrives.

I think you need to be realistic about the number of slides, the quality of your scans, the time you have, and the budget you have. If, in fact, you have thousands of slides, it's just not feasible with a $200 scanner.

 

[Ryan_N]

@mgb74

that's a lot of 250mb thumbdrives

Show me where I say that. ; )

They make up to 500 GIGAbyte thumb-drives these days, Good Sir. A 128 gig version is in the range of $15 for a good one. As I say; data is cheap.

 

[mgb74]

@mgb74


Show me where I say that. ; )

They make up to 500 GIGAbyte thumb-drives these days, Good Sir. A 128 gig version is in the range of $15 for a good one. As I say; data is cheap.

Post #13

Edit: I mistyped 250gb as 250mb. My math was based on 250gb

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

@Alan Edward Klein just saw your scanned/converted scuba pics, which look great! This is me in Sharm el Sheikh, 2008 -- on military active duty, lol. This was a very strenuous deployment involving recreational offshore diving safaris nearly every day. Or golf

Lucky guy. Great duty. I'd love to dive in the Red Sea. I think your scanning project is going to be a lot tougher.

 

[Wallendo]

I have a V600. Currently I primarily use it for medium format scanning as I have a film scanner for 35mm.

I theory, the V600 can scan up to 12 images at a time from 35mm film. In the real world, most commercially developed film is cut into segment of 4 or less images, so the scanner maxes out at 8 at a time. Scanning can be done relatively efficiently. I would load up the holder and start the scanning process (I usually use VueScan for this) and leave the room and do something else for 20 minutes or so and then load the next batch. Slides are more tedious as you can only scan 4 at at time.

I was very happy with the quality of my scans at the time, but comparing them to my film scanner iamges now, the Epson scans look soft. You may want to add a little digital sharpening to the Epson scans. For scanning beaucoups of family photos, the Epson is quite adequate. If your find particularly memorable images, you can send them to be professionally scanned.

 

[Ryan_N]

@Wallendo Can you elaborate on the 20-minute bit? Does a V600 require this amount of time to process eight negatives or four slides???

Leaning towards the Epson. Your feedback has been very useful. Thanks for sharing this.

 

[MattKing]

Film scanners that are available to most of us are slow - 20 minutes is fairly quick.

 

[Ryan_N]

OMFG. God help me. ....Now I finally understand the various "you have no idea what you're in for" gabs coming from @mgb74 and others in this thread!

I honestly thought the scanner did a swipe like a photocopier -- or any other traditional flatbed scanner I've ever worked with. Even HALF that time, 10 minutes, is insane.

@Wallendo forgot to add above that I appreciate your reference to "beaucoups" of family photos. There honestly might be tens of thousands, and indeed, not all of them require (nor will receive) preferential treatment.

When I was very young, my grandfather would subject the extended family to rousing renditions of Make It ...or Break It? He'd widdle down to 2-3 shots of the same scene, put them into carousels, then make the family vote on the best one. The other two were chucked in a waste-basket on the floor beside him. (LOL, I can still hear the sound of that slide projector perfectly.)

Now it is me doing a final round of same.

 

[Adrian Bacon]

I honestly thought the scanner did a swipe like a photocopier -- or any other traditional flatbed scanner I've ever worked with. Even HALF that time, 10 minutes, is insane.

the overall speed is very dependent on resolution scanned. 300dpi? Sure, no problem, it’s relatively quick. 600dpi? 4 times longer. 1200dpi? 4 times longer again. 2400dpi? 4 times longer again. Etc, etc. Next thing you know, you’ve been at it for a day and only got a handle full of rolls done.