Epson Perfection V800

Product	Format	Optical Resolution	Connectivity	Color Depth	Price
Epson Perfection V800	A4	6400 x 9600 dpi	Hi-Speed USB 2.0	48-bit Color	Click for more info

The V800 is the perfect Flatbed Scanner with a High Resolution. First of all, it can scan at an optical resolution of 6400 Dots Per Inch. Epson puts it at 6400 x 9600 dpi but you shouldn’t trust the 2nd number because that’s achieved through interpolation so you don’t get any new details in the scan, it’s just resized. 6400 DPI is the highest digital image resolution you can find on any commercial scanner.

Because of this resolution, the V800 is also a film scanner which can scan 35mm film negatives. It comes with 4 sets of film holders so that you can capture any film from a film camera that includes strips of 35mm photographic film frames, 35mm slides and negatives, medium format film and also 4 by 5 inch film. You can also scan non-standard film up to 8 x 10″ but you don’t have a holder for that, you just put it on the scanning glass.

This high-resolution scanner also has another feature to improve the details on those pixels even more, a Dual-Lens CCD system backed up by its ReadyScan LED lamp and a software feature that does backlight correction to even out the brightness in the photo. That will improve the detail and sharpness. Just like with megapixels on digital cameras, more is better but 2 cameras with the same number can output vastly different results. Scanning an A4 at 300 dpi on fast mode takes about 12 seconds. Scanning a 35mm negative at 4800 dpi takes approximately 65 seconds.

The scanner comes with an ABBYY FineReader license to convert those high-resolution JPEGs, Bitmaps and TIFFs to searchable PDFs. The resolution is not as important in text recognition. Basically beyond 600 dpi there is no real improvement on documents, except for when you scan film slides with text on them.

For color image enhancement, you get the Easy Photo Fix software that comes standard with most Epson scanners but you can also have the Silverfast SE software to improve image quality which can work its magic even more with Digital ICE technology features like Dust and scratch removal (The Easy Photo Fix software also removes dust and scratches but not as well), Auto Exposure, Descreening to remove Moire effect, Adaptive Color Restoration for enhancing the vividness of faded colors, NEGA for an accurate negative to positive conversion from film, SCC for selective RGB color correction and so many others. The software is good and it has features that you don’t get in Photoshop or other photo editing software and if you can recreate the effect it just takes so much more time. The scanning software is fully compatible with Mac and PC.

None of the Canon Canoscan Lide models can scan perform film scanning but they used to make the canon Canon CanoScan 9000F MKII, a direct competitor this scanner.

Epson Perfection V850

Product	Format	Optical Resolution	Connectivity	Color Depth	Price
Epson Perfection V850	A4	6400 dpi	Hi-Speed USB 2.0	48-bit Color or 16-bit Grayscale	Click for more info

The Epson Perfection v850 pro is the even more expensive high-resolution Flatbed Scanner, it is very similar to the V800 just with a few minor feature differences and we believe a major price difference for which we do not think it would be worth it to pay the extra unless you really need them. That being said, both color image scanners have great dynamic range and a high 4.0 Dmax black density. When scanning photos at the maximum scanning resolution of 6400 DPI, the file size can be up to 2GB.

The first difference is the inclusion with this high-resolution scanner of something which Epson markets as “High Pass Optics” which is some extra coating on the optics and the mirrors.

The second is a 20-30% faster scanning time. This could be worth it if you really need the speed but usually with these high-resolution flatbed scanners you work in small batches and are more focused on the quality than the speed itself.

The third advantage is not only is this a film and slide scanner too, but it has the additional set of film holders. If the V800 has 4 film holders, this has a duplicate for each, so 8 in total. That’s a good addition and it helps you work a lot faster, since when you are preparing one set of film, the other one is scanning. But you can also buy 3rd party film holders from Amazon for a fraction of the price difference.

It has the Silverfast SE Plus which comes with extra Kodochrome features, Auto Frame Alignment and multi-exposure.

The last addition is that you get a calibration software and 2 calibration targets in the package. Color accuracy is something that will matter to most professional photographers, so it is understandable that you would want this feature. This is one of the most feature-packed and high-quality scanners you can buy today.

The A3 scan size equivalent of this scanner is the Epson Expression 12000XL-GA.

Epson Perfection V600

Product	Format	Optical Resolution	Connectivity	Color Depth	Price
Epson Perfection V600	A4	6400 dpi	Hi-Speed USB 2.0	48-bit Color or 16-bit Grayscale	Click for more info

The Epson Perfection V600 photo scanner is a Flatbed Scanner with a high resolution, the same that you get in the Epson V800 and V850. But the difference is that it costs 4-5 times less. So why is it as cheap if it has the same number of pixels per inch? Let’s have a look at what the Epson V600 has before we get into the differences.

This high-resolution scanner has a CCD (Charge-Coupled Device) sensor with a pixel density of 6400 DPI but it doesn’t have the dual-lens system, nor the high-pass optics. It has the highest resolution of any flatbed scanner at this price point. You can connect it to Windows PCs and Macs through its USB 2.0 port. The V600 has really fast scanning speeds, it scans documents that are A4 size in 6 seconds at 300 dpi.

The software included with this flatbed scanner is not as fancy as with the others but it will work for most users: Epson Easy Photo Fix, Epson Copy Utility, ArcSoft PhotoStudio, ABBYY FineReader Sprint Plus OCR. The ABBYY OCR software can convert the document scanned into searchable PDF files and Word documents with editable text. You can use the Easy Photo Fix app to enhance and correct your high resolution photos with one click and the ABBYY to do optical character recognition which converts scanned images to searchable PDFs. You can also sync your high-quality photos to the Cloud Storage accounts with Dropbox, Evernote and Google Drive integrations.

Epson provides TWAIN drivers with the epson perfection v600 color photo scanner for both operating systems on their website making this flatbed scanner fully-compatible with 99% of the scanning apps. It can also scan negatives and slides but has only two digital film holders. So if you are into film photography and you don’t want to spend much on a desktop scanner, this high resolution flatbed scanner is a solid choice.

If you are on a budget, you can also get the same scan quality with a 6400 DPI optical resolution with the Epson Perfection V550 for a lower price. If you are seriously on a budget, then the Epson Perfection V39 costs under 100 USD and is great value for money.

And if you have a large photo collection and scanning speed is important, then you should look at the Epson fastfoto FF-680W wireless high-speed photo scanner or the Plustek ePhoto z300.

I need a flatbed scanner with high resolution. But which one?

For digitizing photos in high resolution, our choice is the V800 since it offers all the professional editing and enhancement tools that you need. If you need the extra features and you are ok with paying the price difference, then the V850 is for you. For entry-level photo scanning, the V600 will satisfy your high-resolution scanning needs without making a large investment. If you need a portable flatbed scanner, there are two options: The Flippal mobile scanner and the Doxie flip portable photo scanner that can scan 4×6 photos. There is the idea of purchasing an all-in-one flatbed scanner with a document feeder so that you get the best of both worlds, but with office document scanners, the scanner resolution is much lower. They are meant to be document scanners. These flatbed units are good for photos and documents. Portable scanners like the Doxie Go SE with rechargeable battery and SD Card support, the Vupoint Solutions magic wand portable scanner and the Fujitsu Scansnap ix1500 color duplex document scanner are all 600 DPI resolution scanners. In the case that you were looking for a high-resolution scanner because you want to digitize slides, negatives and films, bear in mind that flatbed scanners are sometimes quite slow and if your film collection is large, a dedicated film scanner might be better for you like the kodak mobile film scanner, kodak scanza digital film scanner or the Plustek OpticFilm 8200i SE.