Epson Perfection V200 Photo Scanner

Better than anticipated

By StephenT  Aug 7, 2007 | 19 out of 19 found this Epson Perfection V200 Photo review helpful

Pros: Quality of scans, ease of use, software

Cons: No film or slides larger than 35mm

Like many boomers, we've been wanting to digitize our 35mm slides, as well as a few B&W and color negatives. I'd been researching film scanners for several months and had decided against the $500 Nikon, which apparently has problems with Kodachrome slides, and was considering Epson's $450 V700 when I chanced on the announcements for this little beauty. SO GLAD we waited!
We've scanned over 200 slides so far, and continue to be impressed, amazed, really at the quality. Great color, good shadow detail, sharpness - it really gives up precious little to units costing many times as much. We've also scanned some prints and negatives with similar results.
The included software is very intuitive - operates in three modes - Automatic, Home, or Professional; I'm finding the "Home" mode to be the best for most our purposes. Also included is ArcSoft's PhotoImpression 6, which after a brief learning curve has become my favorite editing software - even includes healing and cloning tools for fixing damaged photos. (The dust elimination feature in the scanning software seems to do an excellent job, too - Between that feature and the well-designed and marked slide and film carrier, we're whipping through our project much faster than anticipated. One note here - This unit is definitely designed for 35mm. It can't handle larger negatives at all, and cuts off part of our old Instamatic (square format) slides.
Scanning four slides at 400dpi takes about 7 minutes and results in an avg. file size of 2.8mb and a pixel size of 2400X1600 - about equivalent to a 7mp digital shot. The V200 is capable of scanning to 4800dpi, but such a scan would take over 15 minutes per slide and result in a file size of over 40mb - very cumbersome to work with, and for most home users there's simply no need. The scans we're getting at 400dpi look great full-screen on the monitor and make beautiful 8X10 prints.
My computer has a dual-core processor, and I've found I can edit photos while scanning with no loss of performance in either program. Nice!
In short, we continue to be impressed with the design and performance of the V200. It is heartily recommended to anyone wanting to convert film to digital.