Epson Perfection V550 Photo Scanner
| Epson Perfection V550 Photo Scanner |
|---|
 Ownership: Mag Laboratory |
| Reflective Scanner |
|
Type: Flatbed |
| Transmission Scanner |
|
Type: Flatbed |
The Epson Perfection v550 Photo Scanner is essentially a limited Epson v600 possibly intended to fill a marketing niche where the late Epson v500 was originally intended.
A large portion of the information presented in this overview is provided by filmscanner.info.
History
The scanner was donated by Brandon in September 2020.
Recommended Settings
Resolution
It is recommended to scan at 1800 to 2400dpi. No reasonable gain in optical quality can be achieved past this point.
The gold standard of document scanning remains 300dpi. There is no reason to go beyond this, so go ahead and set it to 600dpi for the sake of being unreasonable.
Bit depth
Maximum resolution! It should be noted that 48-bit color is highly recommended for scanning negatives since grading from 8-bit color will result in significant loss in color resolution.
8-bit color should be fine for reflective document scanning.
Recommended Scanning Workflow
135 film
The following guide is only written for 135 since 6x9cm has been scanned only once.
Note that the film holders are on the bookshelf.
- Flatten film before scanning. (book technique recommended)
- Place film in the plastic 135 scan holder, place holder into scanner
- "Preview" to align scan
- Place 4 scan regions on the 35mm film holder.
Note that each strip of film should hold either five or six standard 24x36mm negatives. These will be cropped in the grading software. - Scan all regions into target folder
- Repeat until all film is scanned
Letter Document Scanning
Normal workflow, but you should place the corner of your original slightly offset from the alignment target at the edge of the scanner glass because the scanner will scan approximately 1cm offset from the target.