Hi all,

I have an Epson 4870 for 4x5 transparency scanning but I'm not that pleased with it. The scans are soft, the old 2450 I replaced with the 4870 was way sharper. I have read much feedback about the 4870 and understand the resolution issues and I have concluded that Epson's manufacturing tolerances are not as high as other manufacturers, I just think I have purchased a bit of a dud whereas others have been happy with theirs.

The main reason I upgraded to the 4870 was the digital ICE, which whilst not amazing, is certainly much better that cloning dust and hairs out by hand. It works much better with Silverfast SE by the way than with the Epson bundled software.

My question is, are there any higher end scanners out there which will A) do a better job of scanning than the 4870 and B) provided digital ICE for film?

I thought the answer to my problems was going to be the microtek i900 complete with it's glassless film holders but reading the specs the digital ICE appears only to work on prints not film, why is this?

Of course I could just use quickload and not worry too much about dust but obviously this is more expensive. I like the ICE feature on the 4870, it saves me a lot of time but I've read a lot of comparisons and I think something like the i900 is going to provide sharper scans so why did they not include ICE for film??

What other scanner offerings would offer me the ICE for films and a sharper scan. Hardly any thing else out there seems to offer ICE apart from the new Epson but I kind of wanted to step away from Epson now and try something else.

Thanks