PPC > Reviews> Peripherals

Epson Perfection 2450 Photo

Iain Laskey looks at an ideal scanner for the photographer

The Epson Perfection 2450 Photo scanner tries to be a jack of all trades. While it can perform the usual scanning tasks demanded of a flatbed such as pages for OCR (Optical Character Recognition), printed photos and so on, it also tries to meet the needs of the photographer with the ability to scan a variety of film strips both negative and positive.

Installation

The 2450 has can be connected to either a Firewire or USB2 connector although it will happily work on a USB 1 connection if needed. The installation is very straightforward and supports all versions of Windows from 98 through to XP as well as Mac OS 8.1/9.  As well as the drivers and Epson’s own bundle of software including a natty photo duplicator, the package contains a copy of Adobe Photoshop Elements and TextBridge Pro.

Features

The 2450 can perform 48bit scans at up to 2400 x 4800dpi. This is a true scanning resolution, not an interpolated one although in reality, there is little to be gained from scanning above 2400 x 2400 apart from getting bigger files. The maximum scanning area is 8.5” x 11.7” for normal scanning. The unit features a separate diffused light source in the lid to cope with transparencies. Being diffused it can help hide some of the dust and marks on a negative but it is not as good as some of the auto-correction features built in to dedicated film scanners.  The front panel features scan and power buttons.

Scanning

There are two options for scanning. You can choose the fully automated route by running Epson’s Smart Panel or by using the more tweakable TWAIN driver.  The former scans whatever is in the unit then decides what kind of document it is such as a colour photo, a positive film strip and so on. Once identified, it then performs the scan proper. Smart Panel is clever enough to recognise several prints or a photo strip and produce separate files for each image. You can also tell it to scan/print, scan to OCR or any of eight different options.

The 2450 includes 3 different film holders. One holds two 35mm film strips of 6 exposures each, the second holds four 35mm slides and the last holds 5x4inch film or 120 film up to 6x9cms. As noted before, the software is clever enough to spot different images and will scan the strips accordingly. As the transparency scanning area is 4 x 9inches, you can use it for 6 x 17cm panoramic shots or even for scanning 10x8inch film in strips which can be stitched together to give the final scan.

Because of the USB 2 or Firewire interfaces, scan times are very good indeed even on quite large photos. If you’ve only had a USB 1 or parallel port scanner before you’ll be astonished at how quickly the 2450 scans.  

Quality

In tests, the 2450 produced superb results no matter what the source. We scanned negative film and slides as well as several prints. The ability of the scanner to pick out detail from dark areas indicated an excellent dynamic range. The colour fidelity was top notch too. Given that it isn’t a dedicated film scanner, we were very impressed. The diffused light source worked very well and despite the low resolution (in strip scanning terms) we were able to scan then print some very nice looking images.

Conclusion

At between £260 and £300 this isn’t a cheap scanner. However, the quality easily justifies the price and Epson are to be commended on creating such a top notch product at this price point. The unit looks good, too, with the high speed interface options being the icing on the cake. The only real letdown is that the printed documentation is a bit sparse but, alas, so much of it is these days.

The 2450 comes complete with a one year call-out warranty although Epson can provide an optional three year onsite upgrade if desired.

If you’re looking for a dual role scanner with a strong leaning towards photographic tasks, you won’t go wrong with the 2450. Sure there are better scanners out there and it is no match for a decent dedicated film strip scanner but at this price it can do no wrong. Recommended.

Iain Laskey

^top