For whatever it is worth. I have spent the better part of the summer in Chicago at the School of the Art Institute using their Imacon 949 scanner. I have to say that it is an impressive piece of equipment compared to the Epsons. Its sharpness is absolutely superb and it is incredibly fast. It does suffer from mediocre software and there is more noise in color scans than I would like at this price point. If Silver fast were available for it this would be for me the ultimate scanner package. This Imacon is not an incremental advantage over the Epsons but in another class by itself. As I have said many times before you can get an acceptable scan from the Epsons that will give you a good 11x14 and an acceptable 16x20 with intelligent sharpening, but the Imacon far exceeds this "16x20 acceptability". If I owned one I would never get another drum scan or use the Epson again. Of course I cannot begin to afford one so that is an idol threat and since I live in New Mexico I won't be using this one very often either so by and large I will continue withe the 4990.
There has been some buzz here that these Imacons were only marginally better than the Epsons and not worth the much higher price, but my experience with this one leads me to believe otherwise. I actually flew home one weekend and brought back a ton of film that I want to work on this year solely so I could scan them here on the Imacon.
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