Railfan Technology > Epson V 500 photo scanner

Staples has 20% off Epson flatbed scanners this week. This makes the V500 down to $159.99. This is one of the models which will scan Kodachrome slides without making them look like you store them in the cat's litter box.

The V500 is very easy to work with, I figured it to be a decent entry level scanner. I'm not conversant in such things but was able to scan within minutes of turning the thing on. Scans seem to be sharp although, I can work my way through the menus and get it screwed up. My rational was that it scans 35mm slides and negatives and also my 645 slides. It uses different film holders and then has a routine to recognize the difference between the image and the black holder.

It does have a digital dust removal, I think it scans from two angles and digitally removes anything above the surface of the film. It's worked out just fine, especially for the price. An alternative would be something dedicated to 35mm slides only, maybe with an auto-feed of some sort. But that's a different ballpark entirely.

If you want to take your scans from your V500 to the next level, get one of these variable height film holders for it.

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

This is what adjusting the height so the holder is in the "sweet focus spot" for your individual Epson V series scanner can do.

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

Also, there is a post in this V500 thread about the focus issue. I've attached a composite image demonstrating the comparison although this is down-sampled from the original scan size. At full resolution the difference is even more apparent but TO limits the image size so I had to down-sample it here. Larger images are in this thread...

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

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