Product Description

Epson Perfection4490 PhotoA4 4800x9600dpi 48bit Colour Flatbed Scanner with Digital ICE technology B11B176022 Scanners Scanners

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #2250 in Consumer Electronics
• Brand: Epson
• Model: B11B176022
• Released on: 2007-10-18
• Platform: Windows
• Dimensions: 4.45" h x 10.71" w x 18.70" l, 8.82 pounds

Features

• Scanner Perfection 4490 Photo 4800 x 9600dpi 48 bit colour Firewire/usb2.0 - EPSON - B11B176022

Manufacturer's Description
The Perfection 4490 Photo offers the photo enthusiast a great value film and photo scanner. Digital ICE Technology automatically removes surface defects such as scratches, dust, dirt particles and fingerprints from film so you can easily restore damaged film and turn your photo library into a vibrant, digital image collection.

Box Contents

Customer Reviews

Recovers old 35mm negatives superbly once you know how to use it
I've been using this for a week to scan 26-year-old negatives. I'm delighted with the results, particularly in terms of dust removal. There were a few hurdles to overcome:

(1) To start with I thought Digital ICE was having very little effect - the scans still looked very dusty. The answer to this is easy once you know it... when you prescan, and have (for example) 8 thumbnails, if you then apply settings (e.g. Digital ICE), they will only apply to the first thumbnail. You have to either select each thumbnail in turn and apply the settings you want to each one, or select all the thumbnails, and then apply the settings en bloc to all. I haven't seen a way to specify my typical settings as defaults. So the user interface is logical once you're used to it, but fooled me initially.

(2) I was often getting a discoloured area in the middle of the negative; solved once I realised this was a curled negative touching the glass. The holder can't hold a curled negative fully flat. Solution: put the negative in the other way up (so it curves upwards from the holder), and you can then choose a mirror-image scan. The image doesn't seem at all distorted, despite the curve on the negative.

(3) odd coloured spots on the scan, unlike the dust on the negative I'd seen earlier. I retried a few times, with canned air and even dry screenwipes to get dust off the negative, but had the spots again only slightly shifted. Then I realised that this was a speck of dust on the scanner glass - cleaned the glass and all was ok.

Speed - ok, it can take 40-60 minutes to scan 8 negatives at 2400 dpi with Digital ICE, but the results are well worth it.

My conclusion - if you want a scanner to scan negatives, make sure you get a machine with Digital ICE. The Epson 4400 has done everything I wanted once I'd worked out how to use it.

Film Buff goes Digital - Shock Horror!
I waited many months to get a scanner of this quality at the right price and here it is. The Epson 4490 comes with all the software and accessories to enable digitising 35mm and medium format negatives and slides. Now, I've only tried black&white negatives so far but that is why I bought it. I've been shooting B7w since 1988 in both film formats and I started by scanning a range of 35mm and 6x6 negs at 1200dpi and what a surprise I got. Although it is slow - it is worth it. This machine delivers quality scans that I found to be amazing. All that with minimum effort. I'm thrilled I bought it. The only reason it dropped a star in the ratings is that on first impressions colour takes a little computer manipulation to put right whereas b&w doesn't.

Even Does Lantern Slides!!
This is probably one of the few scanners that will cope with clunky old glass lantern slides. It has a medium format scan mode for negatives (and see-through positives) which is around 3 inches across - this means that it will scan a lantern slide of 3.3 x 3.3 inches, albeit with slight cropping of the image. To do this, you need to remove the white sheet from the lid, select 'professional mode', 'positive' image' and 'film' and play about with it. The results are excellent!