Scanning Darkly

After owning my Epson 4490 for 6 months, I've finally gotten a chance to fire it up. (Excuse: I moved right after purchasing it and have been out of town quite a bit this year :) One friend and one professor have raved about this particular model, particularly the resolution (supposedly on par with costly Drum Scanners) and ease of use. I can now say that I am smitten with this scanner! Up to 12 negatives can be scanned at once, with selections for black and white and color film. One thing I do like is that black and white film can be scanned for RGB output, which is kind of critical for photographic minilab output as well as if you'd like to manipulate the tone of the image. Another great thing about slides and negs is that you can batch scan them, and all frames are scanned to individual files that are named sequentially. This is going to make archiving all my negs soooo much easier and enjoyable. Negs and Slides take longer to scan, but this is to be expected with high resolutions and small areas. Overall, this is one of the fastest scanners I've had the pleasure of using.

The only beef I have with this particular scanner so far is that any photo near the bottom edge of the scanner will be cut off slightly. I don't know whether this problem is inherent to this particular scanner or the model itself, as I purchased a refurbished model directly from Epson for a very good price. It's not too big of a deal as I'm seldom scanning flat art or photos, but slightly irritating nonetheless.

Now all I have to do is get more ink from my printer and find my duratrans inkjet paper...