Which scanner for photo slides: Epson vs Canon

Irish Stones

Hi, I'm considering purchasing a scanner which is able to scan 35mm slides.
I have an old HP ScanJet 3670 which does a rather poor job with slides. A friend of mine has recently bought an Epson V370, I gave him some of the slides I had previously scanned and the files he returned to me were brilliant compared to what I had got from my scanner, a couple of those files look like photos taken by an entry level digital camera, the details are sharp and the colours are close to real, so I'd like to go for a scanner like his.
Then I see that for twice the price there's the Epson V550 (around 200 euro) with some extra features, like the dust removal.
The Canon CanoScan 9000F has similar specifications, the price is almost the same.
So my questions are:
-Is V550 much better than V370? Is it worth to buy it rather than V370?
-If V550 is much better than V370, which is better between Epson and Canon?
-Is there anything better than the ones I named?
Thanks in advance!

DaireQuinlan

Flatbed wise I've only ever used one of the canons. It's ok for 120 negatives, but doesn't handle slide very well or 35mm well at all. People speak highly of the Epson 700/750 as a flatbed. Ideally you need some dedicated 35mm scanner. I use a Nikon Coolscan V for 35mm, but they're pretty hard to find and expensive to boot. There are a number of new 'Reflecta' scanners on the market nowadays but I haven't looked into how good or bad they are. There are also a big shed load of cheep and cheerful yokes you can get in the likes of Aldi for under €100 or so, don't touch them with a bargepole.

At a minimum you need hardware based ICE or its equivalent, so make sure whatever model you pick has that.

pete4130

I have an old 9900F canon scanner. I got it in about 2003 and it was meant to be the best flat bed scanner at the time. Biggest waste of money I ever spent. Horrible colour reproduction on slides, struggled to read BW negatives that were thin, reasonable at best for colour negs. It put me off digitising negatives for years and pushed me more towards digital capture.

About 3 years ago, I purchased an Epson V500 and didn't expect much from it. I was very wrong. It's a fantastic scanner. Easy to use, image quality is very good and its pretty good as scanning slide too. Slide doesn't ever really scan the best in my experience. There is always a little colour shift in the scan which can be corrected.

Here are a few scans with the Epson V500:

first 2 are slide scans.

Irish Stones

First off I want to apologise for my slow reply.

DaireQuinlan wrote: »

Ideally you need some dedicated 35mm scanner. I use a Nikon Coolscan V for 35mm, but they're pretty hard to find and expensive to boot. There are a number of new 'Reflecta' scanners on the market nowadays but I haven't looked into how good or bad they are.

Yes, I know that the Coolsan series scanners are probably the best on the market, but the price is way over my budget and I think they're more targeted to a professional use rather than a home use.

pete4130 wrote: »

I have an old 9900F canon scanner. I got it in about 2003 and it was meant to be the best flat bed scanner at the time. Biggest waste of money I ever spent. Horrible colour reproduction on slides, struggled to read BW negatives that were thin, reasonable at best for colour negs. It put me off digitising negatives for years and pushed me more towards digital capture.

It's the feeling I had, the results I've had so far with my HP is so disappointing that I put the idea aside. Until this friend of mine showed me what his scanner can do.

About 3 years ago, I purchased an Epson V500 and didn't expect much from it. I was very wrong. It's a fantastic scanner. Easy to use, image quality is very good and its pretty good as scanning slide too. Slide doesn't ever really scan the best in my experience. There is always a little colour shift in the scan which can be corrected.

It's possible that the V550 is a small evolution of your model so I might presume that the performance will be at least the same as yours.
Your photos are amazing, rich in details and with perfect colours. The colour shift that my slides gave after scanning was close to impossible to correct, but it was clearly my scanner's fault, so I think that your model or its equivalent is what I could go for.

Thanks to both of you for your help and advise!

pete4130

The V550 is probably a slight improvement. From what I've read, the V700 and V750 aren't a great deal better than the V500 considering the difference in price between them.

My V500 has already paid for itself several times over with the amount of scanning I've done with it.

magicbastarder

i have a V700, and can echo what DQ said about 35mm; it's not up to the job of my (now retired) coolscan III, which i must have bought twelve or thirteen years ago. very happy with the performance of 120 scans, though - but as pete mentioned, it's a serious jump in price from the v500 or v550.

DaireQuinlan

Though the big advantage of the 700/750, which isn't probably relevant to the OP is 4x5 and 8x10 scans. I spent an hour yesterday stitching together this from 4 strips scanned on my crummy Canon 8600:



What a PITA. It's also a good example of what Pete is talking about WRT thin negatives, you can clearly see vertical striping in the image from the scanner. I'm assuming from what he was saying above that that wouldn't happen with the epson he was talking about.

Interestingly the NEW epson 850/800 support 4x5 still but they've dropped support for 8x10

magicbastarder

i have an old canon 9900f to give away, if anyone wants it. hasn't been powered on in several years, but was working last time i used it.

one thing i would warn any potential takers about is not to use canon software with it, the original software was shockingly bad. silverfast or vuescan makes a very big difference with it.

Irish Stones

I think I will stick with the V550, which has received many positive reviews on the web and that is priced less than 200 euro on several websites. It could be my Christmas present :-)
Thanks for sharing your experiences.

pete4130

I've literally scanned some 35mm slides this morning belonging to my wife from a trip back to Ireland last month. I'll post them up soon when I get them off her laptop. unedited, RAW scans with Irish light. The previous scans I posted were from 120 film.

Irish Stones

Thanks Pete!

pete4130

She doesn't mind me throwing these up. Just snaps walking around Dublin.

They are raw scans, not adjusted or edited. Light wasn't great either so they do look a touch flat.

Irish Stones

Thanks Pete, the colours of these scanned slides are much much better than I could achieve with my scanner. Though I don't know what the real colours were, it's clear enough that they are very good.
I cannot judge the definition because I presume that the forum server has reduced them to a handier 800*500 pixel format, so that they look a bit grainy when zoomed in.
All in all they are nice pictures, even with a dull light.
As I told you in a previous message, I am pretty convinced that the Epson V550 is what I need (and want ).
Thanks to you and your wife!

pete4130

Cool. You;ll be happy with the Epson I'm sure.

The original scans were 20.8MB tif's so I just used Nikons View NX viewer to resize them to 800 pixels on the long edge.

Here's a few links to her 35mm scans on flickr...the sand dune ones can suffer from some colour shift when scanned. A lot of glare/contrast and the scanner can get confused. The Epson software has a colour correction tick box that can be really good at adjusting before post processing. All shot on a Nikon F90X on Velvia 50 or Velvia 100 I think?

Stockton Beach by NooSixty, on Flickr



Stockton Beach by NooSixty, on Flickr


Stockton Beach by NooSixty, on Flickr

Irish Stones

These last pictures have a very good definition, the sand is not a fuzzy layer of colour but has its texture and the bushes in the third picture are clear and defined.
I'm telling you this because I know what I would get with mine.
I'm going to write a nice letter to Santa to let him know my wishes
Thanks!