Thoughts on the EPSON Perfection 1260 PHOTO Scanner please

[dave milbut]

just picked one up refurb from epson for 39 bux shipping included (reg 79 + shipping). says native optical res is 1200 x 2400 dpi resolution and 48-bit scans. anyone use it? also does negs and slides with incl. 35mm Transparency Adapter, single negative/slide capacity. xp is fully supported. usb 1.1.

comments? is it a dog? how's the quality. i figure i can't go wrong for 39 buckets, right?

[YrbkMgr]

i figure i can't go wrong for 39 buckets, right?




Right on the money Dave.

First of all, you lost 39 bucks in the laundry last year in loose change (if you count what's in the couch), so this is an easy one.

I've owned Microtek and Epson. I used to LOVE Microtek, but know what? Epson makes their own scanners, and they're generally faster.

I personally like Microteks software better, and hopefully with your epson, you'll get the TwainPRO software.

But hell, even if you don't, I'd snap that baby up in a new york second.

Peace,
Tony

[dave milbut]

excellent! thanks tony... btw, they have a couple more there... look under clearence if anyone's interested. guess the acer's gonna be a doorstop now. even if it is faster the optical on it was only 600.

any word on the scan quality and speed of the 1260 photo for images/negatives?

[brent bertram]

Dave,
I have both an Epson 1650 with transparency adaptor and an Epson 2400 . They are good flatbeds, and do a creditable job on negatives and slides, but not up to a dedicated scanner. As Tony hinted at "I don't know anything about negatives" , at 1200 ppi resolution on a 35mm negative, you'll only have about 1.5 MP to work with . That may limit you to snapshop sized prints. The reduced number of pixels compared to the 2400 is probably the only significant issue. You can buy 5 of the 1250 for the price of a 2400, and , as I recall, you're usually broke <G> . It's a "no-brainer" !

Buy the 1250

:-)

Brent

( on re-reading, I see you already bought it. GOOD CHOICE ! <g>

[dave milbut]

But hell, if you are impressing friends and neighbors, as opposed to selling
your prints, I still think this model is a bargain at 40 bucks.




that's what I'm coming from. thanks.

That may limit you to snapshop sized prints.




That's cool because my printer (oly 330n dye sub) only prints snapshots! ~4x5 :)

[dave milbut]

brent, is there any value on using interopolation to get a higher res scan on the negs? the spec says it can do 9600x9600 w/interopolation.

[dave milbut]

for the price of 3 extra large pizza's i guess no matter what i get i'll be my "money's worth". :) but is there any advantage or disadvantage to "resing up" in the scanner as opposed to in photoshop?

[dave milbut]

cool. thanks for the advice tony.

There's a school of thought, and I don't speak to its validity, that one
wants to perform as many manipulations as possible on RAW data from the
CCD.




that's kinda what I was thinking. I guess it'll come down to trial and error. But I was hoping to get opinions on how much effort I should put into getting more out of the scanner itself. I gues it comes down to how good is the epson sw at working on the raw data.

thanks, dave

[YrbkMgr]

I gues it comes down to how good is the epson sw at working on the raw
data.




Yeah, and realize that not all epson software/scanner combos are the same. As I said, I have Epson Twain Pro, which is a far cry from their other software, and THAT is not nearly as comprehensive as Microteks...

[Mac McDougald]

I got into this discussion late. Just two comments:

- Agree totally that if you are going to uprez, just try same with
scanner interface AND PS, and compare at 100% size. If you can't see any
diff, there probably isn't enough to be significant. Can tell you that
with my old HP scanner, PS upsample *is* somewhat better than with the HP
software. Don't know about Epson's current offerings. (and the 1260 is
not really "current" is it?)

- A slightly divergent discussion about Epson scanners. Lots of
knowledgeable folks (you can perhaps find discussions searching Google
Groups in comp.periphs.scanners) say that in the higher rez 2400ppi model
2450 AND 3200, there is still only 1200ppi optical resoultion, as they
both use two 1200 sensors and the 2400 is actually acheived from
selective sampling/merging between the two. Not sure if other 2400ppi
flatbeds like HP, Microtek,etc do the same thing. But certainly another
reason that a decent dedicated film scanner (certainly for 35mm at least)
still muchly outperforms these flatbeds in every measurement of rez,
dmax/dmin, and dynamic range.

Mac

[dave milbut]

i actually went looking for info on this model...

<http://www.macnn.com/news/20212>

referred to by zeb in the osx thread in the mac forum. but she-it. i couldn't pass up the 39 bux deal. if it's a dog, it's a dog. i'll find someone to take it and go get the newer one. i THINK i'll be happy as long as the speed is ok. I HATED my paralell port scanners cuz they were dog slow. so I traded that one and got a scsi acer, which was fine for a couple of years. how is scanning via usb 1.1? (i have usb 2 ports, but that's all the scanner will support).

[Bert Bigelow]

Dave,
I got into this even later than Mac, and can't add much, except to echo Mac's comment that a low-cost film scanner will do a much better job on 35mm negs than the best flatbed-with-adapter.
It's not just resolution. The film scanners have more dynamic range, and lower noise...black areas are REALLY black, not colored confetti when you blow them up! At least that's been my experience.
Bert

[Mac McDougald]

USB 1.1 is slower than most all SCSI implementations.
However, the speed of the scanner itself is generally the slowest link,
and scanning anything at 1200ppi is unlikely to saturate the USB 1.1 bus,
and if it does, probably by only 10% over, if that.


Mac

[dave milbut]

cool thanks mac. it should be shipping monday as they transferred the package data late last night. i can't wait to play! :)

bert, thank you too. i'll have to judge it when i see it i guess. my acer did a fair job at transparencies and negs at 600dpi. (for my purposes, personal archive only). so i'll wait and see.

does anyone out there actually OWN a 1260 photo? or will i be the first? ! :)

[Bert Bigelow]

Re USB transfer speed: My Minolta Dimage Dual Scan II film scanner is the older version with USB 1.1. The newer Dual Scan III has USB 2.0. I was thinking of selling mine on EBay or something and buying the III until I did some measurements. In batch mode, at max (2820 dpi) resolution, it takes about 2 minutes per slide to do the whole process, including uploading the image data. The upload time for mine is 15 seconds. I decided it wasn't worth the trouble to upgrade to the III to save, at most 15 seconds per slide out of a total of 2 minutes.
Bert

[dave milbut]

interesting. thanks bert!

[Bert Bigelow]

Bill,
Thanks for the tips. I have been looking at the 2200 as a replacement for my 780. I'm a little put off by cartridge cost. A friend who has one told me that the seven(!) cartridges cost $11 each and he is getting the equivalent of about 25 8x10s...that's $2.50 a print for the ink!
I'm also using Vuescan, but I haven't used multiple passes much. I'm batch-scanning old 35mm slides for a family photo archive, and most of them are not great quality, even though they are important for historical purposes. I use the batch scan mode a lot!
Bert

[Bill Lamp]

Bert,

I got a tip here to try ITSupplies (ITSUPPLIES.COM) The price was $9.95 each with free shipping on orders over $75. I gave them a try and the delivery was as fast as orders from Epson. I've found, for my work, that the light colors run out faster.

(NO Dave, NOT out the door)

As for the cost of ink and paper for an 8x10... How much would you have to pay, per each, for a custom photo lab to print one of your pictures, in 8x10, the way YOU want it? And for that matter, how much does a normal photo lab charge for one done the way they want to do it? I don't know the current price, but the last time I had one done it was around $5.

Bill

[Bert Bigelow]

Bill,
Thanks for the lead on inkjet supplies.
You are certainly right that anything you print at home will be cheaper than going to a photo lab. I was just shocked at the ink cost for the 2200. My 780 5-color cartridge costs about $18 normally, sometimes as low as $16 if I catch a sale. I get about 18 8x10s out of a cartridge, so the ink cost is about $1 per print, which is much more than the cost of the best premium glossy paper I can buy. Somehow, that just seems wrong to me. I feel like the printer manufacturers are almost giving me the printer to "lock me in" on the cartridges. Now they're even putting chips in the cartridges to prevent refilling, adding to the cost of the cartridges, just to maintain their monopoply position.
So when a new printer comes out...not a cheap giveaway one either...and the ink cost suddenly doubles or triples from previous models, even if I can afford it, it p****s me off. I don't like to be ripped off!
Bert

[William Kazak]

Sounds just like my Agfa. Mine works great once it is hooked up. There is no
real support from Agfa, however as they are out of the "home" market now.
You should do well with yours. If you need support, then you will really
find out what you got there!