The Epson Perfection 2450 Part II
by David Feign (NOCCC) - July 01, 2003 at 18:57:26:
The advantage of using Epson's scanning software was that I could pre-set the orientation and color compensation characteristics of each of the framesLast month I reported my first impressions of the scanner. Since then I have spent many hours exploring the device and found out much more. Most of what I found was by trial and error but I did get some help from NewSoft (see below). First, the trouble I had with not being able to scan more than one image was pilot error. I had used default settings where I shouldn't have and, as a result, was scanning in images that were nearly 600 MegaBytes. My computer has only one GigaByte of RAM so there was no room for more than one image. When I set the options properly, I was able to scan all 12 images in the film holder at less than 20 MegaBytes each. The advantage of using Epsons scanning software was that I could pre-set the orientation and color compensation characteristics of each of the 12 frames separately, thus taking advantage of the scanner's color depth and saving later processing in PhotoShop. I also checked their claims on resolution. I happen to have an old binary angle encoder which had, in its highest resolutions, alternating clear and opaque lines that are 1/2000th and 1/4000th of an inch wide. The 2400 ppi setting clearly resolved the 1/2000th lines but failed to resolve the 1/14000th lines. Any higher (interpolated) resolution settings did not resolve any better (as expected), but did serve to reduce the jaggies in lines that were not exactly vertical or horizontal. My main disappointment was that Epson's software supported only their film holders. I had been hoping to use my own, home-made film holders to be able to scan more frames at a time. But when I tried my holders, Epson's software did not recognize the individual frames. And the results I got were inconsistent. The first time I scanned eight 2" X 2" slides (instead of the four in their holder), I got nine frames, one of which was blank. That would have been fine but I could never replicate that result. Every other time I used my holder (and three variants of it), I got the proper number of frames but they were very distorted - sometimes covering only part of a frame and sometimes including a small version of the whole frame in a strip otherwise blank. What I wound up doing is using the SilverFast software to scan the whole field and separate the frames by clipping them apart in PhotoShop. That took a bit more effort and didn't allow individual frame correction during the scan. My second disappointment was Epson's support. Like most large companies, they hide behind FAQs and on-line support, where I could not find answers to my questions. The good news is that NewSoft, Inc., a German software company that produced the excellent SilverFast software I'd mentioned previously, is still a small enough company that provides personal customer support. Not only did they answer my questions about their software, they also checked with Epson and answered some of my questions about the scanner itself and the software that came with it. Unfortunately, they would not give me the means they used to contact Epson, but I highly recommend NewSoft for both excellent software and real customer support. My contact with them was thorough and I highly recommend that company.
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