Good value. Excellent Optics. Reliable.

I purchased the Epson V700 two years ago in order to transform my growing film archive into digital images. My primary purpose was to have a more permanent archival form with easy redundant capacity. After having researched scanners extensively, I settled on the V700. Since I do serious amateur but not professional photography, I didn't feel the need to have the wet-scanning ability that the V750 allowed.
Included software was the driver/utilities program, Epson Scan, Adobe Photoshop Elements 5.0, and Silverfast AI. The driver was set up without any problems. Elements is a good program for someone like me with limited requirements for post-processing, and indeed contains many of the features of the complete Photoshop; however, professionals and "editphiles" may prefer to drop $400 for the full program. Silverfast in its restricted version is limited in its utility, and Epson Scan allows many of the same controls.

In addition to a document guide, the scanner came with film holders for 35mm slides (12 slides), 35mm filmstrip (4 strips by 6 frames), 120mm strips (6 frames of 6x6cm or 4 frames 6x7cm), 4x5 film (two sheets), and film area guide for 1 sheet of 8x10 or other film assortment. Herein lies my main complaint about the scanner; the film holders are easily warpable, and not sturdy enough to ensure film flatness in most formats, particulary 120mm. For a scanner which is not inexpensive, more work could have been done to create quality holders that would complement the power of the optics in the scanner. In addition, much of my work in medium format is with 6x7cm negatives (Mamiya RB-67). Only being able to fit 2 negatives per strip in the film holder is 50% less efficient than if Epson were able to sqeeze 2 more cm into the readable area of the holder.

Use of the scanner is easy, with "instant," "home," and "professional" modes. Instant mode, enabled by a large button on the front of the scanner, is useful mainly for document scanning, as it does not enable a significant degree of control. Home setting is simple, but does not harness the power of the software to control a very powerful scanner. Professional mode enables fine control over exposure settings, contrast, resolution, file output type, etc., and I would highly recommend utilizing this setting for your workflow.

The scanner has dual lenses for refined image acquisition. It has an optical resolution of 6400 dpi; although "higher" resolution settings are available, these options are based upon digital extrapolation, very similar to "digital zoom" on camcorders, and do not offer additional image detail or quality. Detail from film scans at a resolution of 6400 are amazing in quality. A 35mm negative can produce a 20x30 inch print at the respectable resolution of 300dpi, with huge prints possible with larger negatives. Combined with the power of Photoshop, excellent prints may be made without the need for plug-ins or a dedicated film scanner.


Operation is fairly quiet. Output is possible through USB 2.0 or Firewire connections. Firewire in particular is fast, although I would have preferred to have the option of an external SATA port as well for added speed.

Other nuances include the large size and need for the document guide to be in place before turning the machine on for proper functioning. However, these are easily overlooked for the quality and relative affordability of the V700.