Updated 2/5/21

If you’ve got slides, prints or old negatives sitting in a box or a drawer somewhere, chances are they aren’t getting the love they deserve. With the Epson series of scanners, you could turn those negatives and slides into easily shareable digital photos in your spare time.  I’ve been using the Epson V850 for the past couple months, and I’m delighted with the quality and speed of scanning the full range of film products sitting in my cabinets.

Epson V850 – for high-quality scans

 

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Updated 2/5/21     Current price at Amazon is $1,149.00  Click here. 

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At the top of the line in Epson scanners, the V850 is an amazing workhorse.  It comes with multiple film/slide holders, so you can really fly through your archives. Each slide holder holds a dozen slides, and while those are being scanned, you can be unloading the last 12 and reloading it with 12 more.  That makes for constant progress through however big a collection you have.  With the standard slide holder, you can hold slides of multiple formats.  Do you remember these old formats?

Here’s a tip…  As you scan, you can assign a basic name to all the slides you are scanning in one batch, and the standard software will assign a three digit suffix to each.  If you want them in a particular order, here’s how to arrange the slides.

In addition, you can scan to a huge variety of resolutions.  Depending on your intended use, you can optically scan from 50 to 6400 pixels per inch (ppi), making it easy to email your low-resolution images or print your high-resolution images on the highest quality printer available. Want mural size images from your old Kodachromes?  No problem, the Epson V850 will handle it.

One caveat.  The V850 expects your slides to be rectangular – either horizontal or vertical.  When it encounters something with proportions other than the standard modern 35 mm slide, it’s liable to give you black bars on either side, like this scan of a square format 126 slide.

When scanning film, you need to make sure you place the sildes or negatives on the scanning bed properly so any writing will not be reversed.  Luckily, all the film holders give you a representation of proper placement so you won’t accidentally scan your film backwards.

If you are loaded with negatives instead of slides, the Epson V850 handles them in bulk as well.  The three slots will hold up to six images per strip.

Using a high-resolution setting, I was able to pull a very workable 10,000 pixel wide image from this business card size image of my great-grandfather.

I ran the V850 through its paces, scanning 110, 126, 35mm, 120mm, and 4×5 positive and negative films – all with great success.  There are holders for all of them.  And of course, there is a plain white pad to back up any prints you want to scan as well.

Is the Epson V850 the best available consumer scanner?

The quality of the V850 is as good as anything I’ve seen available to the consumer market and while there is a bit of learning curve, you’ll be scanning prints and film the very first day you open the box.

Maybe the biggest decision you’ll have to make immediately is what resolution you want to use when scanning your materials. For me, most everything was scanned at 2,400 ppi when scanning 35 mm slides or film.  That created digital images slightly larger than 3000 x 2000 pixels.

Using my Epson WF-7620 printer, that allowed me to print beautiful 8.5×11 color or B&W prints.  I also printed a few at 11×17 and they were definitely frame-worthy.

Scanning snobs will probably insist that you should scan so that your print resolution is 300 pixels per inch, but I’ve found that my Epson printers do quite a good job with a minimum resolution of merely 120 pixels per inch, and they certainly scan and print much faster that way as well.

Another issue that scanning professionals will insist on is using high-priced scanning software and the V850 comes with samples of two:  X-Rite and LaserSoft.  However, the included versions are “limited” and don’t handle batch scanning, so I didn’t use either.  Scanning takes some serious time, and batch processing allows me to automate the process while I walk away and do something else in the meantime.

The best and the least best

My favorite feature of the V850 is being able to batch process 35mm slides, 120 format film, and 35mm film.  It will do 12 slides at a time, 18 35mm negs at a time and up to three 120×120 format images at a time. With two film holders for each size, that means you can keep the workflow in constant motion.  That can make the difference in starting a job or putting it off for another day.

My only issue with the V850 is that there have been situations where black and white negatives with lots of dark areas confuse the scanner, and cropping is thrown off with what is part of the image and what isn’t.  Kodachrome slides also seem to throw off the automatic cropping as well and have to be manually cropped to avoid having too much cut off.

Luckily, with a bit of cropping, you can always make sure you capture your entire image by manually scanning each image.  Even with manual selections, it will still batch scan all of them at once.

What’s in the box?

In addition to the Epson V850 flatbed scanner, you’ll find:

• 8″ x 10″ Transparency Unit (built into lid)
• Eight film holders: 35 mm slides, 35 mm film strips, medium format 6 x 20cm and 4″ x 5″ (two each)
• Film Area Guide
• Scanner Software installation CD-ROM
• LaserSoft Imaging SilverFast SE PLUS
• X-Rite i1Scanner with reflective/transparent IT8 targets
• Setup poster
• Hi-Speed USB 2.0 cable
• AC adapter and power cable

See more information and specifications on the Epson V850 at http://epson.com.

Disclosure: Epson sent us a V850 to test in order to create this review.  Opinions are strictly our own, as always.