Epson 3200 review

The Epson Perfection 3200 scanner

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Film scanning ...3

35mm At 3200 full optical resolution.


The 3200 dpi 38.1mb file (reduced here)

Two details at 100% resolution, even the dust on the film is sharp. Original shot on Ektachrome, Nikon F2 - 600 f4 Nikkor

The scanner was set to auto exposure for this, I reduced the magenta manually

Edge to edge sharpness, the film grain is now bigger than the pixels. Nikon F90 - 24mm Nikkor

I used mounted transparencies for all the 35mm scans, the mount caused no problems with depth of focus. My only concern is the dust, you now have to keep the scanner surface dust free as well as the slides. The transparencies sit in open apertures on the film holder, these apertures have a finger grip point to enable you to remove the slides without putting finger marks on the document glass, there is a lot of attention to small details on this scanner.

35mm film strips.

Although a lot of transparencies may be mounted, most professionals have their film cut up into strips of six. The Epson has a two strip 35mm film holder, loading the film is not a major problem but clipping the holders shut can be fiddly, best to practice on a spare strip first. The film is placed emulsion downwards and then the whole 12 images are previewed. Draw a selection on each of the frames you want to scan, or duplicate the frame you have just drawn. The advantage of duplicating the selection is that it also duplicates any settings you may have made to that image. You can have up to 12 selections. Another point on using the strip holder, is that you can scan all six frames as one image or if you have a panoramic camera which shoots 2 or 3 frames wide shots, then this holder will accommodate. Files scanned by the Film strip holder are 41 mb in size (slides mounts can overlap the image).


12 pictures in one preview	Strip scans are as sharp as mounted scans

Sharpness test on strip holder	Detail on hat

I wanted to see how much difference in sharpness there would be by placing the strip film directly on the glass and emulsion side up in the strip holder. After scanning in every permutation the difference is not visible, there isn't any advantage in laying the film directly on the glass surface, your not going to get sharper results. The above shot was taken with an old 80-200 f4.5 Zoom Nikkor, any softness in the image is due to the the lens optics (the film grain is visible in the detail frame).