Scanner questions

[Bill, 70's military B&W]

I bought 'a lot' yesterday and it included 3 scanners, I know nothing about them. They came with nothing, no software, cables, attachments, holders..nothing.
I've looked them up on Google and the only one I can get any information about is the Epson Perfection 2450 Photo, G860A
It gives 2400x4800 DPI and has a 8.5x11.7 scanning bed.

How good are those numbers? Is this a good scanner or not? I plan on shooting 4x5 and 8x10 B&W. I have a 4x5 enlarger. I have never scanned a negative before.
I guess that after scanning then it's on to Photoshop. Will this scanner do the job and give me good quality?

The other 2 scanners I could find nothing on.
Microtek MRS 800A-3
and
Microtek MRS 2014 TP

Does anyone have any knowledge of these Microtek scanners??? Will they give good quality scans.

I paid pennies for them, so I could easily just throw them into the dumpster. But I want to hear from the Forum as to whether they are worth fooling with.

Thanks in advance,
Bill

[Jim Jones]

I used a 2450 for scanning 4x5 negatives for years. It easily satisfied my needs with digital prints up to 16x20, the maximum of the printer. I still have the complete scanner stored away somewhere. Perhaps the CD can be copied and sent to you, or better yet, downloaded from Epson. I believe it contains an instruction manual. If you improvise a negative carrier, you need to provide a calibration cut-out at the top. Unlike some film scanners, the height of the negative above the glass doesn't seem to be critical in the 2450.

[Bill, 70's military B&W]

Jim, I appreciate your offer but I'm handling it this way. I'm buying for $40 a complete Epson Perfection 2450 scanner. It comes with all the pieces, software, cables, everything!
It scans 2400x4800 and from what I'm reading and being told that is good enough. I am glad to hear that you were satisfied with 4x5 scanned and then printed 16x20. SO for a Newbie, I think I'm OK for now. Did it do color? prints and negatives?
Bill

[Jim Jones]

I only shot and scanned B&W negatives.

[polyglot]

Expect about 1200dpi optical resolution from the flatbed. The rest is empty pixels.

[Leonard Evens]

Expect about 1200dpi optical resolution from the flatbed. The rest is empty pixels.

I had an Epson 2450, which I used for several years.

See http://www.math.northwestern.edu/~le...ges/e2450.html

You have to distinguish between the sampling rate and the resolution. The scanner will produce 2400 sampled pixels per inch, but it won't resolve at that rate. In the above link I estimated that the scanner was capable of resolving between 20 and 25 lp/mm. That translates into at most 635 lp/inch and doubling that yields 1270 ppi. (Each line pair needs two pixels.)

So I agree that 1200 ppi is a reasonable estimate for what can actually be resolved with this scanner.

[Bill, 70's military B&W]

Thanks, According to Leigh, 1200 ppi, that means that if I print at 300 DPI, that is a factor of 4. So a 4x5 could yield a good quality 16x20 print.
Leonard, thanks for that link, it answered any questions I had about the quality of the Epson 2450. Looks like a pretty good unit.
I am still trying to learn something about the Microtek scanners. They are bigger/heavier than the Epson and I believe they could be newer models. Google does not yield anything useful.
I have a thread on the digital section of the Forum, basically asking the same questions.