There are good Epson scanners, not so good Epson scanners, and downright awful Epson scanners. It's very much the luck of the draw.
I bought a V550 some years ago, heavily discounted, from a well-known Melbourne retailer. (the one popularly known as "Hardly Normal"). I took it home, set it up going by the book, worked with it, shed sweat and tears and (almost) blood over it, and it wouldn't do anything close to what I considered as reasonable quality scans from my Rolleiflex negatives and slides. The damn thing almost drove me to... well, let's say drink.
Returned it and bought a new V600. Later found out, during a chance conversation in a city bar with the pleasant young man who had sold it to me, that the V550 had been sold and returned, was checked and passed muster, and got put out for sale again.
The V600 is no Coolscan, but it does what it is meant to do adequately well. I get excellent scans from 120 6x6 and 6x9, so-so scans from old color negatives of any format, and very average scans from anything in 35mm format. I also have a Plustek 7600i, an ancient thing which gave me no end of problems when I first got it, but then settled in and has been working just fine for the last decade. I've done about 10,000 scans with it and I have about the same number still to do, if it or I last long enough to finish the job.
I've tried several brands of software with both my scanners. No Vuescan, which I reckon I should have got from the very first. In time I've gone back to Silverfast with the Plustek and the Epson software for the V600. They seem to do what they do best without too much human input effort. One should not forget that Silverfish is a German creation, so working with it is very much like driving a Mercedes-Benz with a 16 cylinder engine and. 12 gear transmission. Epson is much more direct and to the point. But then I found the Epson scanner doesn't do as much as my Plustek will, that is if I take the time and put in the sweat to figure out how it works.
I have to say the excellent data posted by our Chris Crawford, has been of immense help to me. Endless thanks to you, Chris, for having put in the time and the effort to document all that. I've followed your instructions as you wrote them and they have never, ever let me down.
One thing I do like with the Epson is I can scan a dozen 35mm images at one time, and go about doing other things around the house while it does its work. The Plustek needs a lot of touchy-feely attention as it only scans one image at a time. I'm not what you would call a "selective" photographer in that I have always believed just about everything I photograph is worth keeping. So many, many hard decisions have had to be made when I have the setup all set up on my desk and the negatives or slides out for a final decision.
I now have three Western Digital hard disks full of scans. What will happen to those when I've popped off, is something I do think about now and then. But I've now come to the conclusion that I no longer much care. Nothing is perfect in the world, and scanning is, well, like almost everything else in life, something I tend to regard now as filling in time. With now and then an image worth hanging on to.
