Epson 2580 or 4180?

[Gerry]

I don't have much experience with scanners and would appreciate advice on
this. I want to get a general purpose flatbed scanner for things like
documents (with OCR), and especially also to do old photographs and slides.
The new Epson 2580 and 4180 both seem like good choices from my online
research and am wondering which would be better for my needs. The specs say
that the 2580 scans at 2400 x 4800 while the 4180 does 4800 x 9600, so the
4180 would seem like the better (its $100US more), but is this overkill for
someone like me, i.e., would I in fact be doing my old slides at the high
4800 x 9600? My interest in scanning is not to do large paper prints, but
to get my old pictures in electronic format along with the rest of my photos
from my digital camera of the last few years. In fact, from some of the
brief specs I have found, it seemed like the 2580 might be more suited for
someone like me re use of slides (I don't have much film negatives to do).
I would love comments on what the differences are between these two machines
other than the scan resolution, and which might be better suited for me. If
there is another scanner on the market that people think is better, then
feel free to advise on that also. Thanks,

 

[Charlie]

I don't have much experience with scanners and would appreciate advice on
this. I want to get a general purpose flatbed scanner for things like
documents (with OCR), and especially also to do old photographs and slides.
The new Epson 2580 and 4180 both seem like good choices from my online
research and am wondering which would be better for my needs. The specs say
that the 2580 scans at 2400 x 4800 while the 4180 does 4800 x 9600, so the
4180 would seem like the better (its $100US more), but is this overkill for
someone like me, i.e., would I in fact be doing my old slides at the high
4800 x 9600? My interest in scanning is not to do large paper prints, but
to get my old pictures in electronic format along with the rest of my photos
from my digital camera of the last few years. In fact, from some of the
brief specs I have found, it seemed like the 2580 might be more suited for
someone like me re use of slides (I don't have much film negatives to do).
I would love comments on what the differences are between these two machines
other than the scan resolution, and which might be better suited for me. If
there is another scanner on the market that people think is better, then
feel free to advise on that also. Thanks,

For the type of originals you mention, either Epson is probably
overkill for everything but the 35mm slides, and marginal for that.
Just about any inexpensive film scanner should do a better job on
slides than the Epson flat-beds. My choice in your situation would be
a cheap film scanner (used Nikon LS-IV maybe) and inexpensive
flat-bed, 600 ppi optical resolution.

Now if you have medium format film to scan, then the situation
changes. To get good scans of medium format or larger negatives, it
gets very expensive with a film scanner, so I'd go for the Epson
instead.

Charlie Hoffpauir
http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~charlieh/