Railfan Technology > Epson V700 Factory Refurb for $415.00

Anyone who has been looking to buy an Epson Perfection V700 scanner knows deals on these don't come up very often. I bought one new a few years ago and I've been wanting to get a second one as a spare for awhile but I've never been able to justify the cost.

A couple days ago I discovered Epson has factory refurbished V700s for $415.00 with free shipping. I've purchased refurbs from here before and they were like factory new. Mine is on the way but I thought I'd share the deal here for anyone who has been wanting one of these scanners. Supplies in the Epson Store of factory refurbs are usually very limited.

http://www.epson.com/cgi-bin/Store/consumer/consDetail.jsp?BV_UseBVCookie=yes&oid=63068980

Do you know if the scanner has a fixed focus lens or can it vary the focus? I tried an Epson V500 and returned it the next day account the fixed focus lens was hit or miss getting a sharp scan. No where in the specs for the V700 does it say one way or the other.

Ted

Ted,

The V700 has a dual fixed focus lens system but how it works and what it does is not in any Epson documentation. The Epson scanner sharpness issue has been discussed quite a bit here in the past, including in this thread that you may recall when you had your V500.

http://www.trainorders.com/discussion/read.php?9,2648278,page=1

In the V700/750 one lens is focused for the plane above the glass (for reflectives and transparencies/negatives directly on the glass using the film area guide). The other is focused on a plane above the glass for film in the film holders. Epson claims different lenses are used for different resolutions, and each has a different aperture (which affects sharpness). But the bottom line is that if you select "reflective" or "film area guide" it uses a different lens than if you select "film holder", regardless of the resolution you specify.

Adjusting the height of the holder until you find the "sweet spot" for your particular scanner is the key to scanning with a film holder. There is a line of aftermarket film holders for almost all Epson scanners that have adjustable feet for this purpose. I just use styrene shims myself.

The V700/750 does not have a slide feeder like the V500 you had.

More here:

http://www.trainorders.com/discussion/read.php?9,1927158

http://www.betterscanning.com/scanning/vb_advantage.html

http://www.betterscanning.com/scanning/models/vseries.html

I've had one of these for several years and it's a great machine. I have a collection of negatives that run from 35MM to 5x7 and it does a super job on all of them. Glad I bought it.

Thanks for the info Mike (?) - I had hoped the better models would have had a auto (or manual) focusing lens. While using shims would help, that would take a lot more time to run a test scan, adjust the shims, try again, etc.

I do have a Nikon ED4000 that works quite well, but I was looking for a scanner to do my Grandfather's old 2 1/4 x 2 1/4 slides. Maybe I'll just take those slides to one of those places that scans old stuff like that.

Ted

Ted,

I use my V700 for 2-1/4 slides and negs and it works very well. I too have a dedicated slide scanner for 35mm transparencies, a Minolta DiMage 5400 II so I understand where you are coming from. The V700 will never make scans as good as those from your Nikon scanner. But it works very well for medium/large format.

Once you find the sweet spot height for your film holders, you're done. It only took me about an hour and now all my film holders have the same thickness shims and they have never changed. It sounds like more of a hassle than it is. But yeah, sending them out to a service would be even less of a hassle, assuming they do a good job.

Mike