2450 Demise ?

[chris h]

Looks like the Epson 2450 has had its day.

http://www.normankoren.com/Tutorials/Epson_flatbeds.html

[G. Couch]

Confusing...wonder why they don't just release a higher dpi model of the 2450 rather than a new model with just 35mm capability?

[Doug Nelson]

The news might not be all bad. When the Expression 800 was discontinued you could buy new ones for $150 (down from $900).

[KevinBE]

Just my luck, I bought a 2450 2 months ago. I guess I can't complain, that's just the way it is in the world of consumer electronics. Everything gets better and cheaper all at the same time.

I just started scanning 35mm negatives today fo the first time with this scanner. I sat down with a small box full of negatives, loaded up the negative frame and got a big supprise. A single frame scan at 2400 DPI takes about 20 Minutes! I have tried dropping back to 1200 to see if the scans are acceptable. Even at 1200 it will take a long time to complete this job.

[chris h]

I'm just in the process of getting hold of a combo usb2/firewire card and I'll be interested to see if there is much improvement in the 2450 scanning times with either or connection.

[KevinBE]

I am using USB 2.0 with my 2450. I doubt if you will see any improvement with firewire, even though in realworld test firewire is faster. I don't see any speed advantage with USB 2.0 at the higher DPI settings just in the lower res scans. At high res the speed of the sensor slows down so much that even parallel would work as fast.

[Ed_L]

I just checked out this scanner on the Epson site. It is referred to as a "lightning fast scanner". Does everybody have the long scanning times Kevin mentioned?

Ed

[chris h]

Am I right in assuming that USB2 card to USB2 enabled device doesn't require anything other than a standard USB cable?

[d_kendal]

As far as I know, it needs a USB 2.0 Cable (here )

- David

[chris h]

Thanks for the link Dave that place is only 15 minutes drive from me. Could you get something a little closer in future!!!


Cheers...

[KevinBE]

I tried the silverfast software that came with the scanner and the scan times were much improved. I was able to scan a 35mm negative frame at 2400 DPI in 5 minutes. I don't know why the twain driver is so slow. It may just be because the transparency function is slower than the normal type of scan.

At resolutions below 600 DPI the scanner is very fast. Much faster than my 1240U photo scanner. But, at high resolutions the bottleneck is the sensor speed.

[KevinBE]

Well the mystery has been solved. I started checking the output of Silverfast against the twain driver. The silverfast file was 5 Meg and the twain driver was 95 Meg. Something wasn't right here, there should be that much difference in the file size. I found that the twain driver has set the scale to 465%. No wonder it took so long! The rescan at 100% scale and 1200 DPI took 2 1/4 minutes. Now that's more like it.

I like the twain driver over the silverfast program because the twain driver identifies the individual frames and allows you to set each frame individually but scan in a batch when the settings for each has been set.

[chris h]

We don't get the Silverfast software with the 2450 in the UK but I've been resurrecting a lot of colour negatives with good results using the twain option.

[d_kendal]

Originally posted by chris h
Thanks for the link Dave that place is only 15 minutes drive from me. Could you get something a little closer in future!!!


Cheers...

sure chris.. that worked out well, I was just searching on google.co.uk to hopefully find something on the same continent at least!
Re: 2450 Demise - that stinks for anybody who just bought it, but I hope if it really is happening, that it'll take the price down to an affordable level.

- David

[chris h]

I'm not really concerned about the 2450's replacement I'll keep it a couple of years until its replacement has been replaced !! There's never a right time to buy computer hardware.