Product Reviews

Epson's latest A4 flatbed scanner is a fully-featured model offering text, print and film scanning for less than £200. Epson claims it's the cheapest scanner in its class to feature Kodak's automated Digital ICE dust removal technology, which is normally found on film scanners aimed at professional photographers.

In spite of the effect digital cameras have had on film, there is still quite a strong market for scanning 35mm or medium format film, ranging from the needs of a busy studio to the home users who just want to digitise their collection of snaps. The flatbed scanner with transparency hood has largely seen off entry-level, dedicated film scanners, and with good reason.

The Perfection 4490 Photo offers a good-sized illuminated hood with a transparency adaptor with enough room for up to 12 35mm frames in two six-frame strips, or four mounted 35mm slides. Also appealing is the ability to scan medium format film, and a second adaptor is supplied for a single strip of 120/220 roll of film up to 6 x 12cm. With an impressive optical density of 3.4DMax and high 4800dpi optical resolution, the scan engine features the ability to enlarge a single 35mm frame to print to 13 x 21in at 300dpi along with the capacity to preserve a wide range of highlight and shadow detail from the most demanding of slides.

The 4490 is a solidly built scanner and can definitely cope with the everyday tasks likely to be encountered in the office. Apart from the robust hinges needed for the extra weight of the secondary scanning lamp there are some thoughtful touches. Thanks to a click-stopped lid, accidental damage caused by dropping the heavy transparency hood should be reduced, if not eliminated entirely. Plus, there are locks for the scanning lamp in the hood and another neatly positioned over the USB 2 port for the main cold-cathode lamp and CCD. Sadly, there is no FireWire, but Epson offers an optional automatic document feeder accommodating

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up to 30 A4 sheets, enhancing the all-round versatility and appeal of the 4490. Size-wise, the scanner is on a par with its rivals. The footprint is graciously small, but we found the side-mounted power switch fiddly and unnecessary.

A single plastic adaptor is used for both 35mm roll film and mounted slides, but filmstrips are held firmly using a somewhat delicate-looking and fussy insert. As a result more care than usual has to be taken not to contaminate the film with fingerprints. In contrast, 35mm mounted slides are positioned precisely using the adaptor, but sit directly on the platen, which increases the risk of marking the glass. Four front-mounted buttons allow the usual options such as scanning a document straight to PDF, attaching to an email or simply to copy. The fourth you can set yourself, allowing you to send the document to a selected program.

At this price level there's no SilverFast AI scanning software, not even the entry-level SE version, but Epson's own Scan utility is quite good. With its choice of three scan modes (full auto/home/professional), suited to experience or inclination, it's one of the better controllers. As well as an intuitive interface, there's a sensible set of controls for adjusting exposure and colour, plus some useful enhancement features. In addition to a useful Grain reduction option for fast film, Epson's own software-based dust remover still features. It's not as effective as Digital ICE, but at least it works with prints. Also offered is a pretty effective colour restoration option for faded film or prints. Apart from Adobe Photoshop Elements 3.0 and ABBYY FineReader Sprint 6 OCR, the rest of the bundle is pretty standard. Epson's Creativity suite features a browser and file manager, as well as a copy utility and multiple print layout options.

Scanning is fast for prints, but less impressive for film. For example, a 10 x 8in colour photo scanned to 21MB at 24-bits took just 25 seconds, with a six-second preview. Whereas, a single colour 35mm slide output to the same size and depth previewed in 70 seconds, but we had to wait one minute 20 seconds for the final scan. Scanning times increased substantially with Digital ICE switched on, though; the same slide was scanned in nine minutes. Image quality was surprisingly good for both prints and transparencies, but there's still some way to go before matching a decent dedicated film scanner. Even so, given its excellent all-round abilities, the Perfection 4490 is good value and well worth a look.