Scanners

I'm thinking of buying an Epson perfection 1200, has anyone had any experience of this model? is the transparency adaptor any good?

I had an Agfa snapscan for about a week, the results were not good. The glass was dirty on the inside which gave me a good excuse to go and get my money back! I'm going to be more carefull next time.

Haydn:

I have used the Epson 636U (usb) at the office and I havethe HP 6250 at home. Both have worked flawlessly.

The 636 is only around $70 now too.

Bob

Haydn said:

I'm thinking of buying an Epson perfection 1200, has anyone had any
experience of this model? is the transparency adaptor any good?
I had an Agfa snapscan for about a week, the results were not good.
The glass was dirty on the inside which gave me a good excuse to go
and get my money back! I'm going to be more carefull next time.

Click to expand...

Haydn,

I've just purchased the Acer ScanPrisa 1240UT ... it has a built-in transparency scanner and does a nice job both with opaques and transparencies. Since I had a number of large transparencies (2¼ and 4x5) that I wanted to scan, it seemed like a logical choice, and it performs well. Sells for $200, though I got mine on ubid for $129.
You might have a look at the Acer
Regards
Robert Jeantet

Haydn

I have been using the 1200S with the transparency hood for the past 6 months. The maximum uninterpolated resolution is 1200 d.p.i and this is inadequate for 35mm. The biggest problem I have found is keeping negatives and transparencies flat. The carriers that are supplied with the scanner are flimsy plastic and negs and trannies tend to sag and touch the plate glass scanner bed ,resulting in Newtons rings which are almost impossible to remove in photoshop. I have got over this by using the 6 x 7 mask and anti-Newton ring carrier from my Durst M670 enlarger. I have scanned 6x7 trannies (9.1 M Pixels) and had them professionaly laser printed to 12 x16 on Fuji photographic paper. The prints are visually as good as the original prints from the trannies, but it needs a lot of after work with unsharp mask and curves to get the optimum print. However for the price the results are excellent and are certainly good enough on medium format for the discerning amateur. I know of one local professional photogrpher who uses one and is selling the prints for between £60 and £100 each. you can have a look as some of his work on.

http://www.viewscenes.co.uk/

click on porfolio to view prints

freya

Bob Razler said:

I have used the Epson 636U (usb) at the office and I havethe HP
6250 at home. Both have worked flawlessly.

The 636 is only around $70 now too.

Bob

Haydn said:

I'm thinking of buying an Epson perfection 1200, has anyone had any
experience of this model? is the transparency adaptor any good?
I had an Agfa snapscan for about a week, the results were not good.
The glass was dirty on the inside which gave me a good excuse to go
and get my money back! I'm going to be more carefull next time.

Click to expand...

Click to expand...

Transparency adapters on flatbed scanners make it possible to scan from negative and positive film, and works great for large format film. For 35mm you will have to enlarge very much, so the picture quality will be low. To scan film in high quality, a film scanner is the solution - but unfortunately quite expensive.

Jan Erik

Haydn said:

I'm thinking of buying an Epson perfection 1200, has anyone had any
experience of this model? is the transparency adaptor any good?
I had an Agfa snapscan for about a week, the results were not good.
The glass was dirty on the inside which gave me a good excuse to go
and get my money back! I'm going to be more carefull next time.

Click to expand...

Thanks very much for the advice all.

Ive just phoned PCworld to see if they had any Epsons in stock, apparently its new model time and the 1200 is being phased out.

Now I can't decide wether to snap up an Epson 1200 cheap or see what the new models are like