Near-professional imaging at a great price.
Written: Oct 03 '03 (Updated Sep 04 '04)
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Pros: Excellent image quality in most situations, compatible with several media, good customer support.
Cons: 3200 spi scans are time-consuming, slide scans show optical limitations.
The Bottom Line: Highly recommended for all general scanning purposes and as an inexpensive alternative to dedicated film scanners.
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| jvandegr's Full Review: Epson Perfection® 3170 Flatbed Scanner |
For years, I’ve been searching for an inexpensive way to scan 35mm slides. I had come to the conclusion that this doesn’t exist. I’ve always had access to film scanners in university settings, so it’s never been a big problem. I knew someday that I might need to buy my own, and that time finally arrived. Canon’s FS4000 and Nikon's Coolscan V ED dedicated film scanners are certainly attractive, given that they are serious, professional quality scanners for $600 or less. Still, that’s a lot of money. I’ve tried low-end film scanners and high-end flatbed scanners that also scan film, but neither has produced desirable results.
Enter the Epson 3170 (not a moment too soon!). For less than $200, I now have a scanner that can handle documents, negative strips, 35mm slides, and medium format. Such a deal must be too good to be true, right? Wrong. The technology has finally arrived that allows for high quality scans of all of the above media in a well-built scanner at a more than reasonable price. I refer to the image quality of this scanner as "near-professional", if the image quality of the Nikon Coolscan V and Canon FS4000 is considered to be professional quality. Of course, there are even higher-end scanners out there that some image specialists refer to as the true professional scanners.
In the Box
Scanner, USB 2.0 cable, power adapter, Adobe Photoshop Elements 2.0 CD, Epson Scan software CD, 35 mm slide holder, medium format holder, negative strip holder, setup literature. The Epson Scan software CD contains some bonus software, such as a business card program and ABBYY Fine Reader 5.0 OCR (text-recognition).
Installation
On my Windows ME system (yuck, but soon to be upgraded), the 3170 was a breeze to install. First the software, then connect the scanner via USB 2.0, then connect the cable between the light lid and the base, and it’s ready to scan everything it can. Less than 10 minutes for complete installation, after I got it unpacked.
Operation
I use TWAIN with Adobe Photoshop 6.0 and it works flawlessly. The Epson Scan software is user friendly, but sometimes a little too user friendly. I have three modes to choose from: Full Auto, Home, and Professional. I only use professional and it works well most of the time. The flexibility of Epson Scan is considerable, but it's not immediately intuitive and requires some trial and error.
This scanner has an ON / OFF switch, which is great (not all scanners do). Otherwise, there are only four other buttons, all of which are on the front and operate various functions that most people buying this level of scanner won’t use very often, such as scan to email and scan to printer. Just for kicks, I tried scan to printer once and it produced a very reasonable image without any manipulation. Pressing the large, silver button with the green LED starts up the Epson Scan software immediately, which could come in handy for when you only have 30 seconds to scan before, I don’t know, something bad happens.
For scanning film media, all you do is select the appropriate holder, insert film, and lay it flat on the document table. After that, select the appropriate media and resolution from Epson Scan and away it goes. The light source for film scanning is built into the lid of the scanner. With the 35mm slide “holder”, it’s not really a holder in that the slides don’t lock into it. Instead, the slides lay flat on the document table and the holder only aligns them. Indentations on either side of each slide opening on the holder allow the slides to be removed from the holder without touching the document table glass, although this takes a somewhat steady hand.
Previews can be displayed as thumbnails or as normal, smaller sized images. The thumbnails features works great for getting a fairly large and quick approximate image. However, I've noticed that thumbnail previews cut off the edges of my 35mm slides, and the final scans also have some of their edges cut off. Accordingly, I've switch to normal mode to manually adjust the scan area.
Scan time and image quality
Previews of all media are very fast (under 3 seconds for the document table, under 15 seconds for all other media) and of more than sufficient resolution. Scanning slides at the maximum 3200 spi (commonly and incorrectly called “dpi) resolution with 48 bit color selected can take up to 5 minutes per slide. Definitely not as fast as the Nikon Coolscan V, but the $450 in my bank account has helped me get over it. Scanning a 8.5 X 11 inch document at 300 spi with 24 bit color on the document table took 30 seconds.
The image quality in almost all cases is beyond belief for the price of this scanner. Image quality with documents and photographic prints is stunning. Bright and focused with exceptional color. Indeed, I’ve never seen better image quality from a document table. My test 35mm slides produced 65 MB image files with good color and reasonably sharp focus. I’ve experienced focus problems in the past with flatbed film scanners, but I haven’t noticed nearly as much of a problem here. Both of my Ektachrome test slides were brutal in that they were overall dark and contrasty. As expected, the scans came out a little darker than I would have preferred, but this was easily adjusted in Photoshop. Color also had to be adjusted in Photoshop to match the original slide. Scans of a couple old black and white medium format negatives were even better quality than my 35mm slide scans. I think this scanner produces better quality images from 35mm negatives than 35mm positives (slides).
Image quality comparison
Based on several test slides, the 3170 produces better images than most low-end dedicated film scanners that I’ve tried. Based on a recent side-by-side comparison of a slide scanned in the 3170 and the Nikon Coolscan V at the same resolutions, the image produced by the 3170 shows a lack of definition, not just sharpness. From this same comparison, the color rendition of slide scans from the 3170 is good, but the Nikon Coolscan V yields truer colors in most situations and much truer colors on "difficult" slides. These results were somewhat expected, given the much better optical depth of the Coolscan, as well as the more dedicated slide scanning hardware. Still, with the color rendition and resolution of the 3170, I can make excellent quality 8 X 10 prints from a lot of my 35mm slides, after some adjustments in Photoshop. Occasionally, I need to make a larger print for display purposes as artwork. In this case, I take the slide to a professional color lab for scanning and printing because they usually do it as well as anyone and they have the best equipment available.
Is the Epson 3200 better than the 3170? I don’t know. I suspect there is very little (if any) difference in image quality. Most of the same technology and many comparable (but not identical) parts go into the 3170. Supposedly, the 3170 is slightly faster and has a longer life-expectancy than the 3200, at least according to Epson’s specifications. For $150 to $200 less than the 3200, you should definitely consider the 3170, as long as you’re not shooting large format film. Compared to its predecessor, the 2400, the 3170 has higher resolution, slightly better optical density, and greater reliability.
To sum up the performance of the 3170, I would qualify it as “near-professional.” Its weakest performance was turned in with 35mm slides, although it still did a commendable job, especially considering the price of this scanner. If you’re a professional photographer with large prints to make from 35mm slides, or if you just need extremely high quality scans, get the Nikon Coolscan V ED or the Canon FS4000. Keep in mind that both of these dedicated film scanners have a greater maximum resolution that the Epson 3170, which can be useful for making larger prints. If you don’t need to make large prints and don't need the extremely high scan quality, you need to take the 3170 for a test run before investing hundreds of dollars more – you’ll probably be surprised.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 170
Interface: USB
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