I'm looking into midrange flatbed scanners for capturing medium and large format images. I'm leaning towards an Epson 1680 Professional right now, but I noticed a new 48 bit, 2400dpi HP model that looks interesting.

I was wondering if anyone has any experience with this unit (Scanjet 7400C)? There's no dmax spec listed which makes me a bit wary and the software is HP's proprietary package instead of the AI's Silverfast. Still, at half the price of the Epson with a higher optical resolution, it is intriguing.

Anyone used this unit?

-- Tim Klein (timklein@qwest.net), July 30, 2001

Answers

Sorry - LaserSoft Silverfast.

-- Tim Klein (timklein@qwest.net), July 30, 2001.

You should also look at the Canon D2400U- also 2400dpi &48 bit. I am using one and getting excellent 4x5 and 6x6 scans. I recently compared a 4x5 color neg scan from the Canon with a Pro Photo CD hi- res scan I had done by a high end service bureau. The Canon scan had better sharpness, color fidelity and shadow and highlight detail. We live in interesting times!

-- David E. Rose (DERose1@msn.com), July 30, 2001.

Dave: That's interesting, what you say about the Canon 2400U. Someone submitted a couple of scans to the Imaging-resource scanning forum that showed exactly the opposite; that the Canon scans were far less sharp than a comparable photo-CD.
They certainly didn't look as if they had a true 2400 dpi resolution, and another contributer with a lot of scanning experience confirmed the poor optical quality of the Canon.

-- Pete Andrews (p.l.andrews@bham.ac.uk), July 31, 2001.

I too have been disappointed by the online scans I've seen from the Canon flatbed. My money's staying in my pocket for now.

Tim: don't forget that part of the price of the Epson pro models is for beefier, more reliable construction. If you plan to use this scanner for a while that could be worth more to you than a slight raw performance boost when new. For what it's worth, Epson have recently announced new consumer models which - surprise, surprise - counter the Canon and HP attack. There's a brief report here:

http://maccentral.macworld.com/news/0107/20.epson.shtml

For what it's worth (2), HP have a very bad record of updating drivers for older models of their printers and scanners. It's worse in the PC world, but even on Macs, where drivers usually hang on sort-of working for longer, I wouldn't buy an HP product for anything but immediate use.

-- Struan Gray (struan.gray@sljus.lu.se), July 31, 2001.