How well does The Epson 4870 work on a Mac

[monte_johnson]

I need some help here. I have never really considered a flatbed scanner, but

the reviews I have read on the Epson 4870 are pretty good. I had my heart set

on a deicated film scanner for 35mm, but also want to be able to scan old

photographs and medium format if I want. The problem is I know Epson

scanners have had problems in the past working on Mac operating systems.

So if anybody out there uses the 4870 on a mac let me know how

compatiable it is. Thanks.

[glenn_jobson]

I have a 4870 and it works fine on my Mac, I have a Quicksilver G4/867 with 1GB RAM,

connected by firewire the speed is perfectly acceptable given the quality.

 

I use MacOS X (10.3) which seems to help it along, I have a mate who has one with

connected to a G3 with OS9 and USB 1.1, scan times are long and he can't enable Digital

ICE in the Epson interface, he hasn't got the luxury of Vuescan on OS9.

 

You are likely to get a bucket load of replies saying how bad the output is and how you

should buy a film scanner, blah blah blah, I read all of those and all I can say is, have any

of those acrually seen the output from the 4870 first hand..? I have various bits of kit for

scanning and it depends on what your intentions are, I scan for printing, not archiving,

and I have superb results from the 4870 when the negs are scanned with the print in

mind.

 

Enjoy it.

[monte_johnson]

Thanks , I also want to scan for prints. So i will be using the higher resolution. I

shoot mainly Velvia ISO 50. Some Kodak Elite chrome, very little neg film any

more, but plan to do BW neg film in medium format next year. I have the 10.12

system on a IMac 800 right now with 512 meg ram.

[custom film holders for fl]

Monte -

 

Everyone has different standards for what is "acceptable" to them. Your best bet is to go to a reseller (or friend) and make a scan or two so that you can judge for yourself.<p>

You might benefit by reading the archives of the 4870 Users Group at Yahoo Groups, too. I know there are a number of Mac users in the group.

 

Doug

<p> Doug<p>

<a href="http://home.earthlink.net/~dougfisher/holder/mfholderintro.html">Dougs

MF Film Holder for batch scanning of 120/220 medium format film with flatbeds</a>

[monte_johnson]

The other part I wanted to know. Is the silver fast Ai upgrade worth the one

hundred and fifty bucks more. Sorry do not mean to throw another question in,

but it makes a difference which version I choose.

[matt_kime]

Someone here should speak up as to the value of Silverfast, but in my experience VueScan

is a better value. (Then again, the author ignores the fact that it doesn't work with my

Powerlook 2100 XL, so be forewarned about the tech support)

[monte_johnson]

Thanks Peter, Thats what I wanted to hear. I like the flexibility of a flatbed, but

have felt until this point they did not offer the quality of film scanners. I read

the review in Shutterbug done by David Brooks and was impressed with his

comparsion to the Minolta 5400. He said in his test the 4870 had less grain

visible and side by side prints were comparable. Besides I can justify a flatbed

scanner to my wife easier then a film scanner.

[tom_halfhill]

Monte, I recently completed a test of the Epson 4870 flatbed to evaluate its sharpness when scanning 35mm negatives. Although I bought the 4870 primarily to scan larger negatives, I consider the 35mm test to be a worst-case scenario -- if performs tolerably well with 35mm, it's plenty good for medium and large format.

 

I scanned a b&w 35mm negative on Ilford Delta 400 Pro film, tweaked it with Photoshop (including unsharp masking), and made a slightly cropped 8x10 inkjet print with an HP 5550. I compared the output to a same-size print I made from the same negative in my darkroom, using a Beseler 23C enlarger with a cold-light head and 80mm Schneider Companon lens (a top-quality lens). I used Ilford Multigrade FB paper.

 

Result: the darkroom print is sharper, but only slightly, and you have to look pretty close to see the difference. The average person viewing both prints at a normal distance for an 8x10 probably wouldn't notice the difference.

 

It might be possible to match the sharpness of the darkroom print by using unsharp masking more aggressively on the scanned image. I hesitated to push it too far because it might emphasize the grain. As it stands, the inkjet print isn't visibly more grainy than the darkroom print.

 

The darkroom print on fiber-based paper has better tonality, but the inkjet print is surprisingly good, and I attribute most of the difference to the printer, not the scanner. My HP 5550 is a good consumer photo inkjet, but it's not as good as the higher-end photo printers. It is quite possible that with a better printer, the inkjet output could match the sharpness and tonality of the darkroom print.

 

I don't know how my test result would compare with a dedicated film scan of the same negative because I don't have a film scanner. However, my conclusion is that the Epson 4870 flatbed is good enough to scan 35mm negatives for prints up to 8x10, maybe a little more.

[monte_johnson]

Tom, That seems to me to be a good test of the scanner. I have a 7550 HP

printer and have gotten good prints from my digital camera so it sounds like I

should get good ones from slide scans. My lab makes 11+14 prints on Agfa

paper which have been very good, but sometimes I feel if i had some control

myself they would be better. My first love is BW film, but i cannot break away

from slide film. I know many people have went digital all the way, but looking

at slides through a glass for me nothing compares. I believe the 4870 will

serve my purpose and in a couple weeks I should be able to get it. For me it

has taken much research and a lot of time to come to some conclusion of a

choice for a scanner. Mostly because I have more time then money. Thanks

for taking the time to share your experience.

[tom_halfhill]

You're welcome, Monte. I should add that it took me a while to learn the Epson Scan software. It's very different from the software that came with my previous scanner, an Epson 1640SU. The 4870 software is much better, but the controls are different.

 

One good thing about the new software is that the automatic exposure settings are correct almost all the time. With the old software, I was used to doing more manual tweaking to get a good scan. The new software makes a better scan without any tweaking at all, though you can still make improvements with minor adjustments.

 

Search this forum for earlier messages in which I commented on the dust-removal features of the 4870.

 

One piece of advice I can offer is to have plenty of computer memory and patience if you're using Digital ICE. ICE is resource-intensive and you can see the computer working hard. On my PC with 256MB of RAM, ICE sometimes refuses to work when I'm scanning medium-format color negatives at 1600 dpi, even when I shut down all other programs. When I reduce the scanning resolution to 1200 dpi, it works fine, though slowly. When I turn off ICE, I can scan medium format at 1600 dpi or higher without incident. I'm pretty sure this is a memory problem. Other people have reported similar problems when scanning 4x5 negs.

 

Another tip is not to check the unsharp masking option in Epson Scan. It's better to sharpen the images in Photoshop.