First i want to thank everybody for comments and discussing this subject
Over here in europe umax powerlook III and other alternatives were $400-500
more expensive, and the new Agfa arcus 1200 which might be an interesting
scanner still isn't available. ( will be less than $900)
So i got for about $860 the very discussed epson 1600 pro.
To my surprise the transparant scan area was bigger than indicated by epsons
tech information. Maybe they just indicated the available size inside the
transparancy holders. I can scan an area of 297 mm x 220 mm which is almost
enough for my 6 35mm filmstrips .Only some millimeters are lost on the last
image of each strip. i can live with that, if i need better i scan in two
parts.
It scans reasonably fast (a bit less than a minute at 300 dpi, which is
enough for a normal contactsheet. 600 dpi doubles the time and gives a
gorgeous contactsheet, good for presentaion etc.
The quality of the scan is more than good enough. The software might be a
bit awkward for real transparancy scanning, but for making contacts it is
easy and fast. I can save presets for different kind of films.
I tried a full resolution scan at 1600 dpi. it gave the result i expected
compared to the 4000 dpi scan from my polaroid ss4000. i compared a to 1600
dpi downsampled scan from the ss4000 with a 1600 dpi scan from the epson
1600 pro. The result was very similar after a little tweaking, the polaroid
was of course still a little bit sharper and resolved better the shadows.
The software is a bit poor ( no rotation, only a few fixed points on the
correction curves, the presets box is behind a button, no histograms, only
twain driver, so you have to scan fom inside pshop, i would have preferred
the standalone solution which opens the images in pshop, it makes a faster
workflow )
A mentionable thing is that it comes with software for scanning over a
network, which in my setup is a real advantage.
It came with a short USB cable, but no sscsi cable. Dust cover also wasnt
included. No printed manuals, but extensive in pdf format. And of course my
5th copy of damn Photoshop 5 LE.
All in all i am quiete happy and i expect the scanner to begin saving my
money in about 2 month, because before each contactsheet did cost me 5
dollars....that is only 160 film contact sheet scans and my scanner is paid
for.
