What Flatbed Scanner Do You Use?

[Stewart B]

I'm in the market for a new flatbed scanner and would appreciate you telling me which one you use and it's general performance

[Swampy]

I've got an Epson 3200 Photo, but any of the Epson line will serve you well. Bed size may be an issue for you. I can get by with a legal size. Just make sure that what ever you buy will scan at 2400 DPI with NO interpolation. You may never need it, but for those times you have slides to scan or need fine detail on line art, you'll be glad.

[Stewart B]

I've been thinking of getting the Epson Perfection V350 Photo after reading some good reviews online, my budget is pretty tight and that seems like it has good resolution for the price

[Swampy]

>>>seems like it has good resolution for the price

Just make sure it is true 2400 DPI and not interpolated (where the software increases the DPI kind of like when you resize an image in Photoshop).

[duwayne]

I bought the Epson 4990 to scan 35mm slides and it works very well with the Digital ICE. Digital ICE is a technology that is licensed from Kodak and scans the surface of the film for scratches and dirt/dust. It then uses this information to "patch up" the red/blue/green channels. It does very little damage to the image because it knows what the defect is.

Another thing to consider besides resolution is the scanners dynamic range. This is usually expressed as D-max. It will determine how well the scanner can discriminate between different shade of shadows. Lower D-max will lose some of the details in the shadows. This is what separates document scanners from photo/film scanners.

Like cameras, scanners generate digital noise in the photo receptors. Low-end scanner can produce a lot of noise that need to be removed with noise filtering. For documents this is not an issue so they are generally quite noisy. Like camera, the more you pay the less noise you get.

I paid $450 US for the Epson 4990 and don't regret it in the least.