Epson 4990 Pro

**Ed Richards** · 13-Jan-2006, 14:20

I remain curious about the focus on Epson scanners. The Canon 9950f was the editor's pick at PC Mag. I bought one after a good experience with the Canon 4000, a devoted film scanner. With the current version of Vuescan, which has been specifically tweaked for the 9950, I am getting terrific scans, at least as good as those of the Microtech 1800. Kirk had a bad experience, and was exactly right that the scans were not very good with the software he had available. Vuescan got much better this summer, and with the Dec 8th release, with specific tweaks for the 9950, it was so much better that I have been spending a lot of hours rescanning and reprocessing all of images I had scanned with older versions. I do not use Silverfast because it cannot do the 4800>2400 conversion that is at the heart of my workflow, so I cannot comment on the results with it.

Quality control is an issue. For a nominal fee, Canon sells a 3 year extended warranty. Not a bad deal.

**Paul Coy** · 21-Jan-2006, 11:06

Well, I did it. Ordered my Epson 4990 PRO and it arrived yesturday. Nice machine. Got it up and running but not getting full preview scans of my 6x9 color negs. They seemed to be getting cut off and show up in the preview as 2 different images. I tried to find the configuration menu and so far I cannot find where to tell the scanner that I am scanning 6x9. The Epson help guide shows that the configuration dialog box has a film size menu but then the help documents say it depends on what model you have. I do not see any menu offered within that configuration dialog box. Am I missing something here?

Is there someplace that a newbie to the Epson 4990 can go for questions like this? I don't want to bore you people with these newb questions.

Thanks,

Paul

**Kirk Gittings** · 21-Jan-2006, 11:45

It sounds like you are using the Epson scan software which I have not look at in years. I wouldn't spend much time on it and as soon as possible get up to speed on the Silverfast.

**Paul Coy** · 22-Jan-2006, 17:56

"It sounds like you are using the Epson scan software which I have not look at in years. I wouldn't spend much time on it and as soon as possible get up to speed on the Silverfast"

Kirk,

Been playing around with SilverFast today and I am now up and running. Got some good scans but have a lot to learn so that is a good thing.

Thanks for all your input here.

**Kirk Gittings** · 22-Jan-2006, 23:22

Paul keep at it. There is a bit of a learning curve, but it is really worth it. I have been testing Vuescan on my Nikon 8000, because there is a conflict with SF/Digital Ice on the 8000. In all honesty unless you simply want generic scans, SF blows all competition away and it is a huge deal bundled the way it is on some scanners.

**Ed Richards** · 23-Jan-2006, 08:23

> SF blows all competition away

Depends on how you like to scan and how much memory you have in your computer, and whether you are running a PC or a Mac. If you want to scan color 4x5 at 4800 and downsample it to 2400, in the windows world, and are not running Windows XP 64 with a lot of gigs of ram, you need Vuescan. Silverfast, unless it has recently been updated, will not downsample, which Vuescan does. I have been able to get surprisingly good scans from the Canon 9950 with the current vuescan.