Entered CNET Catalog: 02/18/2004
SKU: B11B163031
Manufacturer: Epson
Manufacturer description
If you're serious about film and photo scanning, you'll appreciate the quality, flexibility and sheer scanning power of the Epson Perfection 4870 Photo. It recognizes detail so fine that you can even see the grain of the film, it scans all common film formats, including up to 24 x 35mm frames in a single batch and can even improve upon your originals as it scans. It's a genuine professional quality solution for photo printing, enlarging and archiving. The Epson Perfection 4870 Photo captures images in such detail that you can produce enlargements of incredible quality at an enormous size. At 4800dpi, it's so good it can even pick up the grain of the film but if you are looking for a smoother finish, Epson Scan now includes a Grain Reduction tool, which blends and diffuses the grain. To achieve far superior scan results, the Epson Perfection 4870 Photo scanner uses a newly designed moving carriage Transparency Unit (TPU). It ensures the best possible light source for a much brighter scan luminance and improved optical density, up to 3.8DMax. The TPU lamp has also been chromatically optimized for improved film scanning. This supremely flexible scanner is nothing less than a superb quality, high productivity in-house scanning solution. Perfect for any serious photo application, including photo studios and smaller graphics and print houses, it can handle all common film formats and scan multiple images simultaneously up to 24 x 35mm frames, eight 35mm mounted slides, three frames of 6x12cm (max) 120/220 frames and two 4"x5" frames. The Epson Perfection 4870 Photo includes professional Digital ICE Technology, which automatically removes surface defects such as scratches, dust, dirt particles and fingerprints from film and prints. Some software-only solutions just soften, blur or alter underlying composition of the image but Digital ICE works from within the scanner during the scanning process. For photo prints it uses two light sources reflecting on the image from different sections, identifying the precise location of physical defects and for film scanning utilizes an infrared light source, which detects the imperfection and generates a "Defects Channel" to the traditional RGB channels to create an improved authentic final image. The best photo studios can count on the most effective combination of scanner and printer. The Epson Perfection 4870 Photo is capable of capturing images in impressive detail, but when combined with one of Epson's acclaimed range of Epson Stylus Photo printers, the results are truly amazing.Product summary
The good: Very easy to set up; solid flatbed scan quality; great value.
The bad: Mediocre film scans.
The bottom line: As long as you don't need to scan film, this flatbed scanner should suit you fine.
Editors' review
- Editors' Choice: No
- Reviewed on: 10/19/2004
You can park this black-and-silver scanner in a pretty small spot; it takes up just 12.0 by 18.8 inches of desk space and weighs about 15 pounds. The transparency adapter is built into the scanner lid; holders for 35mm and medium-format film are included in the box. Setting up the Perfection 4870 is very straightforward. You need to install the requisite drivers and connect the device via USB or FireWire. With every scanner it ships, Epson includes a utility that provides scanning-adjustment tools based on skill level. If you are a beginner, work in the Full Auto mode to produce effortless scans at just a press of a button. For a little more control, step up to Home mode, which lets you fiddle with a few resolution settings and make basic color adjustments. Professional mode gives you full control over resolution, color, and exposure. Easy Photo Fix, which does a decent job restoring the color balance in faded photos, is accessible from each interface.
The Perfection 4870 does a good job capturing highlight and shadow detail in print scans, as we'd expect from a unit with Epson's quoted optical density of 3.8D. If you're dealing with especially old images and negatives, you'll appreciate the dust-removal tool, which has some success removing specks from negatives and transparencies. Be advised that using this tool will lengthen scan time to almost 10 minutes. In our test scans, with dust removal deactivated, the scanner cranked out a 300dpi scan of an 8x10 original in just 55 seconds. Unfortunately, test scans from transparencies and negatives lacked the sharpness and the tonal range we saw with flatbed scans and couldn't match the quality of those from the Microtek ScanMaker i900. But if you're just scanning for the Web or for very small prints, they're passable.
As for help options, you can install Epson's Smart Panel software, which displays a pop-up menu with eight button functions for scanning, OCR, basic image editing, and sharing pictures via the Epson Web site. This is a great newbie feature but one you will probably outgrow. You can access all the standard drivers and manuals online. If you need additional help, you can call Epson's tech support Monday through Friday, 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. PT.
User opinions
Select a User Opinion to view: 1 2 3 4 5 6out of 6 user reviews
Poor Support, I am returning the product.
Pros: Nice photo Scans
Cons: Software won't install, no customer support.
[Edited by: admin]
out of 6 user reviews
A great solution for old photographers
Pros: I've started to use this to scan my forty year old plus collection of old photograph, assorted negatives and prints and I love this machine so far. I'm a former agency photographer and now director of photography at a large daily newspaper and have follo
Cons: The software sucks a bit in terms of useability and the manual is a bit of a joke, but how many scanners can decently handle 24 negs with the push of one button?
out of 6 user reviews
Adobe Photoshop Bugs
Pros: Nice to look at.
Cons: Bad service. Adobe Photoshop Elements 2 is unsupported unless you pay $40 for a support call, even though it is a bug.
out of 6 user reviews
A great scanner for slides and prints.
Pros: Very high quality scans of slides and prints, even old prints.
Cons:
out of 6 user reviews
Great for scanning slides!
Pros: I needed a scanner for boxes of positive 35mm slides and I was really impressed with the results I got from the EPSON 4870. I compared this scanner with some others including the canon i9900F. The default scanning results were awesome. It was able to c
Cons: The edition of silverfast that is bundled with the 4870 is not great at all for scanning film. I don't know about photos, but when scanning my slides I found the default scanning software does a better job.
out of 6 user reviews
Pro enough if you know your Photoshop
Pros: Good clear and easy scans.Quiet scanning. Never failed me once. The transparency scanning its fair and if you tweak the pic in Photoshop the results can be used professionally. After a lot of usage I can recomend it for pro use but only if you know your p
Cons: Not easy to save the adjustments, and use them as defaults. The software that comes with the scanner for pro use it is really lame so your are better of with the Epson scan utility.Yes the scan button on the scanner does not work with XP SP2 but i never u
