A few days ago I received an Epson Perfection V300 Photo Color Scanner for review. Inside the box was the scanner and power cord, a USB cable, a slide and film holder (more about that later) , software and a quick start guide.

Setup of the scanner is simple. Open the CD drive, insert the software CD, close the drive and follow the instructions on the screen. Quick and easy. After the software is installed plug in the power cord, attach the USB cable and follow a brief setup. Turn the scanner on and you are ready to go. The whole operation took about 7 minutes.

First Impressions

It’s black and that’s almost become Epson’s trademark of late. Don’t get me wrong, it’s stylish –almost artsy, but why? Black connectors that go into black holes with slightly raised molded-in black labels are the bane of my existence. Fortunately there are only two things that need to be connected to this scanner, the power cord and the USB cable.

The V300 is a flatbed scanner –no automatic document feed here. Lift the lid, put what you want scanned on the bed, close the lid, and scan. Be a little careful with that lid. The hinge left me with the impression of it being just a bit on the flimsy side. So flinging the cover open and closed may not be the best route to a long-lasting scanner affair.

Keep that same level of care in mind when you get to the slide carrier/film holder. It’s made of light weight plastic and Epson has endowed it with a pair of small spring/tension arms to hold slides in place. If you’re scanning a lot of slides, it’s easy to become complacent about those tension arms and just jam things into the holder without a thought. Do that at your own (or the holder’s, actually) peril.

Note the two tension springs that hold down your slide.

In order to scan slides or film you need to remove the document mat to reveal the transparency unit window. I found myself removing the document mat gingerly because of its fragile feel and then equally carefully putting it back in place when done scanning old slides and color film. The film holder is more robust looking than the slide holder but will still need careful handling.

All that whining aside, remember that this is a $100 unit, well, OK, a $99.99 unit. You wouldn’t expect it to be built like a tank.

But How Well Does It Work?

The answer to that is surprisingly well for the most part and very well in some ways. The first thing that I scanned, using the push button auto mode, was a color print of a picture taken in Arches National Park in Utah. This is an area of rust colored to dark brown rock interspersed with some dark green plant life. The auto scan skewed the color slightly to the blue side and desaturated the color slightly and this was also true in “Home Mode”, “Business Mode” and “Professional Mode”. The color distortion was easily corrected with the image editor built into Windows Vista by adding a little red and saturation back.

Scans of photos of people showed the same skewing of color and saturation.

Two potentially very useful features are a one button email mode and a one button pdf mode. Both work well. The email button adds an attachment directly to the mail and the pdf mode inserts the scan directly into the document. One thing about the email mode that is annoying is that it only recognized Windows Mail and didn’t see the Gmail program that is my primary mail program.

There is a one button direct to your printer mode. When you use this button the scan is sent directly to your printer. Handy if you have no copier and want to give someone a quick copy of a scan.

A brief comment about the “Business” and “Professional” modes. The only advantage to these modes is that they give you slightly more control over the scanning process. However, with this scanner it is largely a moot point because it would never survive business or professional use because of its’ lightweight construction in critical areas like the lid hinge.

The slide and film scans were very close to flawless. There was good color fidelity in both and I couldn’t see any skewing of color or saturation.

Book scanning works as well as any scanner that I have seen does. If you plan to scan books you will need to leave space beside the scanner to open the lid out flat. It refused to scan a book with the lid in place.

The software that comes with the scanner has a “Restore” mode for faded pictures which I used on a picture that is forty plus years old with truly amazing results. The color was restored essentially perfectly to the original. Although the color looks a little off in the “restored” version it is accurate for the time when this image was taken.

Would I recommend this scanner?

Yes, with a caveat about what seems to be fragile parts. If those parts were strengthened this would be a close to perfect home scanner with an excellent price…$99.99 list and $82.24 at Amazon.

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