Epson flatbed scanners: Perfection 2450 Photo
with a little about the Epson Perfection 3200:
by Norman Koren

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Goodby 2450, Hello 3200  |  Introduction  |  Description  |  Image quality comparisons  | Epson TWAIN 5 software
Workflow  |  Adjustments  |  Focus and spacing issues  |  Image sample  |  Conclusions

Related pages

Part 2: Additional 2450 images from Steven Gilbert and Benjamin Kanarek Impressions of the Epson 3200 by Norman Koren | Benjamin Kanarek | Guido Bruck Additional user impressions of the 3200

July 2007: I added another crop below of the Emigrant Basin rock/juniper scanned by an Epson 4870 in early 2007. It shows a huge improvement over the earlier Epsons-- and it's not even the current model (V700/V750). Epson scanners have come of age; they're better than ever. Apart from that, the scanner pages have fallen way behind. I capture images with a digital SLR and I spend most of my time developing Imatest software.

January 2005: My friend George Nyman has published a Comparison of the Epson 4870, the Epson 3200, and the Nikon 8000ED. (The Canon 9900F was also tested, but it flunked.) The 4870 comes out looking very good: better than I expected— quite a bit sharper than the 3200, though (unsurprisingly) not as good as the 8000ED. It looks like a very good choice for scanning 4x5 film, where it has a true sweet spot.

November 2003: Photo-i has a deatiled review of the Epson 4870. It appears to be an excellent scanner— but I'm not convinced it's significantly sharper than the 3200. It suffers the same optical limitation.

December 2003: Epson has finally issued  proper OS-X scan software for the Perfection 2450 Photo Scanner. You'll have to navigate their site because they make it difficult to link directly. (Thanks, Eric Rogers.)

November 2003: Photo-i has announced the new Epson 4870 (GT-X700 in Japan)— the 4800 dpi replacement for the 3200. Features: Digital ICE dust/scratch removal, Dmax = 3.8 (excellent for a flatbed), USB-2.0/IEEE 1394 interface, Silverfast SE6. Impressive as far as it goes, but will it be sharper than the 3200? Flatbeds seem to be limited by the need for the lens to cover an 8.5 inch field (vs. about 1.7 inches for 35mm lenses). A brief test report by Andreas Schmidt seems to confirm my suspicions that the 4870 offers no real resolution gain over the 3200. Epson makes excellent products that offer good value to the consumer, but their 4800 dpi claim is a scam.

Perttu Luukkanen of Finland had published a detailed review of the Epson 3170.

Doug Fisher of Atlanta, GA, USA has produced an MF Flm Holder that allows an entire strip of medium format film to be scanned in a single pass. Very nice! It will work with most Epson flatbeds: the 2450, 3200, 3170, as well as the upcoming 4870 (the 4800 dpi replacement for the 3200).

October 2003: The Epson 3170 has been announced with similar specifications to the 3200, but at half the price. The only significant hardware difference is the size of the transparency unit: 2.6x9" vs. 4x9" for the 3200— wide enough for medium format but not for 4x5. Nothing in the specs indicates that the 3170 will have lower quality than the 3200. (I think it will come with less software.) It looks like a very good buy. I don't plan to get one myself, but I'll be happy to add user comments and links.

May 2003: I've put up my initial impressions of the Epson 3200 on the same page as impressions by Benjamin Kanarek and Guido Bruck.

October 2002: I've put up a new gallery of medium format images, scanned with the 2450.

GOODBYE 2450, HELLO 3200 In late 2002 Epson discontinued the 2450 and replaced it with the 3200 dpi Perfection 3200 (GT-9800F in Japan) with the same 4x9 inch Transparency Unit (TPU) as the 2450 and the same 6-element lens . The 3200's key features: 3200 dpi, 48-bit color depth, 3 times faster than the 2450 (excellent!), Dmax = 3.4 (a little better than the 2450, which was fine for all but the most contrasty slides). In North America it comes in two versions: standard ($399 list) and Pro ($599 list). The Pro version includes two IT8 targets and additonal software (SilverFast Ai 6, MonacoEZcolor 2.5, and an ArcSoft package). I suspect these will be helpful to those who do a large volume of scanning. The specification page indicates a "6 line alternated with 81,600 pixels CCD." (It's called the "alpha-hyper CCD" on the Japanese pages. That's Hype.) The 2450 has a 61,200 pixel CCD. The ratio is exactly 4/3, the same as the dpi ratio (3200/2400). In pages from CCD manufacturers— Kodak, Fairchild Imaging, Atmel, Sony, and others— the longest linear CCD I could find was 14,404 pixels. 81,600 is evidently the total pixels, not the length. To get the array length you must divide by 6: 81,600/6 = 13,600. Guido Bruck spoke to the Epson and Lasersoft people at Photokina, and they told him something like, "The Epson 2450 is so good, that they can sell it as an 3200 dpi scanner." Although Guido expected only a small improvement in sharpness, he replaced his 2450 with a 3200, mostly because of the 3x speed improvement. My big question was, how much would the resolution of the 3200 be improved over the 2450? My hope was that the improvement would be comparable to the 2450 over the 1640SU. The 2450 wasn't as sharp as the HP Photosmart S20 I've been using to scan panoramic images. I had hoped the 3200 would be good enough to replace the S20, but so far the 3200 seems just slightly better than the 2450; it's not as good as the HP S20. The apparent reason: the lens has to cover at least 4 inches when the TPU (transparency unit) is activated (possibly 8.5 inches if it isn't refocused). Lenses in dedicated film scanners have to cover only 1 or 2 inches; it's easier to design them to be sharp. 3200 results: I've put my initial impressions on a brief comparison of the Epson 2450, 3200, HP S20, and CanoScan FS4000US, which includes material by Guido Bruck and Benjamin Kanarek. Summary: faster than the 2450, but not significantly sharper (inconclusive; a little disappointing). I've also added a page, User impressions 1: Lynn Healy and Jonathan Murray. Their observations are similar to Guido's. Links Photo-i has published a side-by-side "interactive" comparison of the 9900F and the 3200. The Canon 9900F is a 3200 dpi, 48-bit flatbed with FARE (infrared dust removal). It has a new 6 element lens with aspherical elements and a new CCD sensor (unlike the 3200, where both are the same as the 2450), and it can scan up to 4x5. Around £299 including VAT. It can scan 24-35mm frames in a single pass. Does this mean it can scan film larger than 4x5? (The 2450/3200 can go to 4x9", but you have to make a custom film holder.) The 3200 came out ahead by a small margin. Daniel Staver has a page of tests on the Canon 9900F. The comparison with the CanoScan FS4000US is similar to my comparison for 3200. Untimately Daniel was not satisfied with the 9900F's performance: he exchanged it for a 3200. Epson Perfection 3200 Photo by Sergei Sherbakov on Digit-life.com. Compares actual resolution with the 4000 dpi Nikon 8000 and finds the true resolution of the 3200 to be under 2000 pixels per inch. 3200 scans looks pretty soft next to the Nikon.

Introduction

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The 2450 hs been replaced  by the 3200, which is very similar. Most comments about the 2450's performance apply to the 3200. The TWAIN 5 software has, however, been replaced.

I recommend reviews by Philip Harle and Steve's Digicams. Ken Rockwell's review of the 1640SU is worth checking out. But take his comments about the 2450 with several grains of salt. He doesn't actually have one. Tony Gillilan's brief review has interesting comparisons with the Nikon Super Coolscan 4000 and Tango drum scanner, but his comparison with the 1640SU shows less difference than I found, probably due to unit-to-unit variation.

Description

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Image quality: Dennis Wilkins' Epson 2450

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One paper you just published, Epson flatbed scanners 1640SU Photo and 2450: comments on image sharpness, though, doesn't show the kind of results I'm getting with my 2450 (my most recent purchase, just two weeks ago, and about the most fun I've had in the "darkroom" in ages).

A friend in New Hampshire (formerly a friend and business partner in a freelance photo business on the west coast) bought a 2450 just before Christmas, and has been sharing images with me. I noticed his images looked very nice, great color, almost grainless skies on 35mm images, but were a bit soft. His 4x5 images looked spectacular. Some other reports I'd read on the 2450 also indicated it was a fine little scanner, but yielded images on the soft side, especially for 35mm. When I went and looked at one (Circuit City) I realized it has a diffusion light source, unlike most film scanners I've used (I have the HP S20 and a Kodak RFS 3600 and have used a couple of others). Most film scanners have very collimated light sources and, like a condenser enlarger, produce "sharper looking", more contrasty images than a diffusion light source in the same enlarger (my Durst L1000 has three different light sources, from full diffusion to very collimated). I wondered if this might be the cause of soft looking images.

So, of course I bought a 2450 to find out. I figured it would never replace a dedicated film scanner for 35mm, but I have lots of 6x6, 6x7, 6x9 and some 4x5 negatives and chromes from the past 40 years that I haven't been able to edit and print in my digital lab. My first tests, simple comparisons of scans from the HP S20 and Epson 2450 at 2400 dpi, seem to indicate that the diffusion lighting is the cause of a slight softness, and a small amount of unsharp-masking brings out the detail in 2450 scans comparable to what I get with the HP. In fact, some parts of the images look a bit sharper in the 2450 scans, others look a little sharper in the S20 scans.

[NLK's comments. I believe the reason for the softness is large area the scanner lens has to cover (at least 4 inches when the TPU is activated) and the small aperture diffraction-limited optical system, which has a large depth of field, not the diffuse light source, which reduces the visible effect of scratches and helps a bit with dust, but has no effect on sharpness. Scans from my HP S20 have always been sharper than the 2450.]

The difference is anything but subtle. I never used the 1640SU much because it didn't do justice to my medium format images. I compared a print from the 2450 to an 11x14 inch print made with my best technique on a diffusion enlarger with a 105mm El Nikkor enlarging lens, viewed under a Schneider 4x loupe. The darkroom print is just slightly sharper. Hardly noticeable to the naked eye. The image below was scanned at 3200 DPI with the Epson 4870 (not a current model), and added to this page in 2007. The improvement over the 2450 is dramatic.

Epson 4870 scan @ 3200 dpi, sharpened (added in 2007).

The next step up from the 2450 is the 4000 dpi Nikon Super Coolscan 8000 ED or the 4800 dpi Minolta DiMAGE Scan Multi Pro (which may interpolate to get 4800 dpi with medium format). Both are dedicated film scanners for formats up to 6x9 cm; both cost around $3,000, and both are superior to the 2450, but the difference will only be significant on images larger than 13x19 inches. I'm reluctant to part with that kind of money to scan images in a format I'm not actively using, particularly since 13x19 inches is the largest I can print. I'm refurbishing my Hasselblad system (body with four lenses). (I considered purchasing a Pentax 645NII system, which has an excellent 45-85mm zoom lens (equivalent to 28-54mm for 35mm), but I was reluctant to spend the money since digital cameras are starting to approach medium format quality and the Pentax body can't be adapted to a digital back— not that I could afford one in the next two years.)

Epson TWAIN 5 software

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Documentation -  The printed 2450 instructions, "Scanner basics," has very little information on using TWAIN 5. Detailed instructions can be found in the PF 2450 PHOTO Guide, an HTML manual designed for web browser viewing that installs with the Epson software. Click Start, Programs...,Epson, PF 2450 PHOTO Guide, then in the browser window click on Scanning from the Manual Mode.

Workflow

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1. Insert the film in the holder emulsion (dull) side up (reversed from what you do in an enlarger). Place the holder in the scanner. The medium format/4x5 film holder is shown on the right.
2. Open Epson TWAIN 5 from your image editing application. (From Picture Window Pro, click File, Select Source... Select EPSON TWAIN 5 (your selection will be stored), then click File, Acquire...) You can also open it by clicking Scan to Application in Epson Smart Panel. The image you see above appears, but it doesn't contain the image on the film you just loaded. It may have an old, stored image.
3. A preview scan is a fast, low-resolution scan used to make adjustments for the final, slow scan. To preview the image, click the left box under Preview. The entire 4x9 inch TPU area will appear. If Automatic Thumbnail Preview for Film is checked in Configuration..., full crops of the film images should appear, and you may be able to skip the next 3 steps. See the PF 2450 PHOTO Guide for more details.
4. Using your mouse, select the area you wish to crop. Select a little more than you think you'll want; this isn't the final crop.
5. Prescan the cropped area clicking the right box under Preview. This operation is faster than the original preview. A little more than the area you selected fills the box on the right.
6. Using the mouse, perform the final crop. Whenever you change the cropping the  Image controls settings are changed. You can be a little generous with the crop— it's easy to crop further in your image editor. If you overcrop, it's (as Yogi Berra says) "deja vu all over again." But try not to crop outside the frame. It affects the Image controls settings. Not a serious problem, since you can set them manually.
7. Perform the final adjustments. Be sure not to change the cropping after you do these adjustments; it will change the Image Controls settings.
8. Scan the image. Remember, the 2450 is slow for large, high-resolution scans. The scanned image should appear in a window in your image editor.

Adjustments

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Document Source: Flatbed TPU: Color Neg. Film, TPU: Monochrome Neg. Film (B&W negative), TPU: Pos. Film (slides; reversal film). Choose the correct setting.

Image type: Color Photo, Color Photo (48-bit), etc. For best image quality I recommend 48-bit color or 16-bit B&W if your image editor can support it. See the PF 2450 PHOTO Guide for information on custom settings.

Destination: Opens a dialog box that affects scan resolution. You should save custom settings because the standard settings are for scanning documents at relatively low resolution, and most film scans should be done at 2400 dpi. I set both Color and B&W at 2400 dpi and save the setting with the name, Hi res film scan.
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Resolution: You should almost always scan film at 2400 dpi. Why? Because there is no benefit from scanning at higher resolution— the 2450 can't resolve it. But if you scan at low resolution, you sample every n(th) position. For example, if you scan at 300 dpi, you sample every 8th position. This makes the scan go much faster, but it can lead to grain aliasing— a nasty effect. If you don't need a huge 2400 dpi scan (a 2400 dpi scan of 4x5 film in 48-bit color is 690 MB), you're best off scanning at 2400 dpi, then resizing down with your image editor. The images on the right are small crops displayed 1 screen pixel per image pixel. One was scanned at 300 dpi; the other was scanned at 2400 dpi, resized down by a factor of 8, then sharpened. The image was made on 1974 Kodacolor— a much grainier emulsion than today's successor.

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Unsharp mask sharpens the image quite aggressively, with a radius of about 2. I normally don't recommend sharpening at scan time, but the 2450 is pretty soft if you don't sharpen it. In most cases it's OK to check the box. But if skies get grainy, you might want to keep it unchecked and sharpen later using Unsharp mask with a threshold, and masking out the sky for good measure. Grain is most noticeable in skies.

Source, Target, Scale  I generally set Scale at 100% and ignore the rest. Always check the Scale setting. It has a curious way of going off 100% and creating monster files. See the PF 2450 PHOTO Guide.
 

Tone and color adjustments  There are four of them, shown on the right, numbered 1 through 4. 1is Image controls, which allows you to adjust highlights, shadows and gamma. Image Controls settings are altered by the AUTO button 4 and whenever the crop is changed. 2 is Tone Correction, which allows adjustment of R, G, B or composite curves. The adjustments can be saved. 3 is Color Adjustment, which can be used for adjusting gray balance (with an eye dropper) and saturation.

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Image Control 1 is the most important of these adjustments. You'll almost certainly want to look at it each time you scan. The goal is to preserve detail in the shadows and highlights. This is not guaranteed with the default settings, which appear after the image is cropped or you click AUTO. The default setting for Shadow is 8; 0 to 60 is available. The default setting for Highlight is 245; 61 to 490 is available. Hightlight is linked to Exposure, which defaults to 0; -10 to 20 is available. All tones under the Shadow setting are pure black and all tones above the Highlight setting are pure white. But the exact meaning of these settings is unclear. If you press Reset in the Epson TWAIN dialog box (above), the image appearance changes, but the Image Control settings remain unchanged. 8-bit numbers range from 0 to 255. Why 490? In my workflow, after I crop the image or click AUTO, I adjust Shadow so no shadow detail appears to be lost. I usually set it somewhere below 8; the image appears washed out if go all the way to 0. I usually increase Highlight to somewhere above 300, depending on the image appearance. Some highlight detail can be lost at the default setting of 245. A histogram would bevery helpful with these settings. Gamma adjusts the middle tones.

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Settings:  Shows you a summary of your settings, which you can save or load. Configuration:  Allows you to control aspects of the scanner operation.  Contains three tabs: Preview, Color and Other. Preview: Automatic Preview starts a preview scan whenever Epson TWAIN is started. I leave it unchecked. Automatic Thumbnail Preview for Film: Checked: Cropping is determined automatically. You may lose small amounts of the image near the edges. Unchecked: You must crop manually; you'll probably want to do a zoom scan. Try it both ways. A matter of personal preference. Mine is usually unchecked. If the Preview image is cropped incorrectly— if underexposed portions of slides are cut off, uncheck Automatic Thumbnail Preview for Film. Color: One of three is checked. Color Controls is my usual setting for scanning film. ICM allows you to select an ICC scanner profile from a list. No Color Correction is appropriate when an ICC profile is applied in the image editor. Other: I check Preserve Preview Settings and (if allowed) Perserve Preview Image.

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Full Auto Mode:  Do not press this button! It starts an Auto scan for documents, not for film. It will take a while to get back to Manual Mode, which is best for film. You'll have to wait until the scanner warms up, then press Cancel.

Focus and spacing

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I recently did several tests on my new Epson 2450 Photo scanner to find out where it is focused— on the glass or above it in the transparency holders. To my great surprise I found that both transparency film and reflective copy are in sharpest focus if they are between 1/16" and 1/8" above the glass!

I did two tests, both at the maximum optical resolution of 2400 ppi. The upper image, scanned as a transparency, consists of chips of Kodak Tri-X, showing the edge of an exposed area (sky) and unexposed film, with a scratch across the film. I used Tri-X, a B&W negative film, because the grain shows the sharpness quite nicely. The image was scanned as a positive to make the exposed area middle gray.

The lower image, scanned as reflective copy, consists of pieces of a textured cardboard with pencil and pen marks. Starting with the first chip directly on the glass, each subsequent chip (6 in each of the tests) was raised above the glass in steps of 3/64". (I chose 3/64" because it is close to the thickness of the plastic transparency holder that comes with the scanner.) The images spaced at 3/32" are clearly the sharpest in each test.

Since doing the test I have attached a piece of card to the bottom of my transparency holders so that the film is close to 3/32" above the glass. This undoubtedly increases the sharpness of my film scans.

The variation in focal point from scanner to scanner may account for some of differences I noticed before I purchased mine. I recommend doing some tests, particularly if you aren't satisfied with the sharpness you're getting. Richard's scanner is definitely out of spec— but it's easy to compensate when you're scanning film.
 

Image sample The bristlecome pines in California's White-Inyo Mountains, near the Nevada border east of the Sierras, are the oldest living things on earth— up to 4,700 years old. Growing at timberline— around 11,000 feet— in a harsh, arid climate with frigid, windy winters toughens these trees and turns their many scars into artworks of transcendent beauty. I took a series of images in 1974 using a Rolleiflex 2.8F Planar, which I regret selling. The film was the Kodacolor of the day— much softer and grainier than today's successors. The 2450 does a great job of scanning the negatives. The image on the right has been edited with Picture Window Pro and resized from the 4273x5177 pixel original, which has plenty of detail for a 13x19 inch print. Grain is clearly visible in the 1:1 crop, below. I scanned with Epson TWAIN 5 with unsharp mask checked. Might have been a mistake with this old, grainy negative, but I can always blur the sky if the grain bothers me.

Conclusions

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• Sharpness is equivalent to about a 1600 dpi dedicated film scanner— not true 2400 dpi resolution, but it's adequate for 8½x11 inch prints from 35mm. Dedicated 4000 dpi scanners such as the Canon FS4000US are much sharper. The limitation is apparently caused by the large coverage required by the lens— at least 4 inches when the TPU is activated.

• The 2450 is excellent for medium format prints up to 13x19 inches and superb for 4x5, where it has a sweet spot— it should be capable of making sharp 32x40 inch prints. But to edit 2400 dpi 48-bit color 4x5 images (690 MB) you'll need a fast (=> 2 GHz) computer with loads of memory (=> 2 GB if you can get it). If you have the memory, I recommend scanning at 2400 dpi for best quality then resizing down (to pixel dimensions equivalent to 1200 or 1600 dpi) after the scan. (Do this by resizing the number of pixels, not changing the dpi. Pixels works better.) For 4x5 format this may not be practical— you may need to scan at 1200 or 1600 dpi to keep file size manageable.
 
• Sharpening or unsharp masking is required for best results. The Unsharp Mask function in Epson TWAIN 5 provides very strong sharpening with a radius of about 2. It works well most of the time. Sharpening in the image editor provides better control— you can set a threshold and mask out skies.
 
• Its focal point varies slightly from unit to unit— that may be one of the reasons for its low price. But depth of field is large, so a slight misfocus doesn't hurt much. Focus tends to be slightly higher than the normal film holder position. You may want to experiment to find the best focus; a thin piece of cardbord under the film holder could yeild a small improvement.
 
• Color quality is excellent.
 
• The 2450 is much sharper than the Epson 1640SU Photo.The 3200 appears to be only slightly sharper than the 2450.
 
• The Epson TWAIN 5 software is pretty good; its main deficiency is the lack of a histogram. The Image Control settings are somewhat obscure. If you want premium scanning software, try Vuescan ($40) or Silverfaxt Ai 6 ($119).
 
• At $380 US, the 2450 and it's successor the 3200 are terrific bargains. The 4000 dpi Nikon Super Coolscan 8000 ED and the 4800 dpi Minolta DiMAGE Scan Multi Pro. are superior (the Nikon is the better of the two for medium format), but they cost around $3,000 and the difference will only be significant for images larger than 13x19 inches. The new Epson 7600/9600 printers (24/44 inch carriage width) represent a major advance in printer technology for $3,000 and $5,000, respectively. A 7600 would go beautifully with the 2450 and 4x5. If I could sell enough prints I'd be tempted.

Epson flatbed scanners: Additional images
The Epson 3200: impressions by Norman Koren, Benjamin Kanarek, and Guido Bruck

Images and text copyright © 2000-2013 by Norman Koren. Norman Koren lives in Boulder, Colorado, where he worked in developing magnetic recording technology for high capacity data storage systems until 2001. Since 2003 most of his time has been devoted to the development of Imatest. He has been involved with photography since 1964.