Epson Filmscan200 8/10

Epson no longer make dedicated slide scanners, focusing instead on their flatbed scanners, many of which have slide adapters. However, I believe that dedicated slide scanners offer better quality pictures. The FilmScan 200 is not difficult to set up on WinNT 4.0 machine, inspite of the fact that it has the notoriously difficult SCSI interface. Just make sure you give it the right SCSI ID and put a terminator on it if it is at the end of a chain. The software provided is TWAIN compatable so you can use it TWAIN apps like Adobe Photoshop and virtually all other graphics packages. The bundled software is also obviously TWAIN compatable (but is not as good as Photoshop). There are no Win200 drivers, because Epson obviously want us to move on to their flatbed scanner range. There is however a 3rd party driver called Vuescan (which also works with many other scanners) to enable you to work it on Win2000.

Provided as standard there is a negatives tray and a slide tray. You can also scan in developed APS films with the help of a special adapter. The software to scan in is easy to use, and you have options to rotate the slides, choose the resolution, and also the printer. If you have an Epson printer, the software is compatable with the Epson colour calibration system (similar to HPs ColorSmart technology). The preview scans come up quite quickly but high resolution final scans take at least a minute to do. If you're scanning many slides, taking this length of time will end up being a being a bit annoying. At 1200x1200 the resolution is average, with most rivals now producing 2900x2900 or even 4000x4000 slide scanners. Epson quote a resolution of 2400x1200, but this is just marketing hype, since the 2400 is quoted because it just scans the same area twice (which is of no use!) You need high resolutions to scan slides, because their physical area is very small.

In short this is good entry level slide scanner, but is probably a bit slow for pros. If you see this for clearence in your local computer shop and want good quality slide and negative scans look no further (unless you want to spend a bit more on the Nikon range!)