Epson Perfection 2580 PHOTO

The scanner was bought as a replacement for a five year old "best buy" scanner which although top notch for its time, was beginning to look rather puny in comparison to the new kids on the block. I paid £84 in a sale although the RRP was £94.

It's a fairly handsome looking beast and the silver and grey colour scheme which now seems to be the mode blends well with my existing PC equipment.

Installing the software ...
...reading the reference guide which came on the disc. I quickly found that the guide contained very little information of any use whatever. It is sloppily translated from whatever the language was in which it was first written.

It's very perfunctory and in common with much in the way of computer related literature, seems to have been written by someone with plenty of technical knowledge but no appreciation of how to impart this knowledge ... more

The scanner was bought as a replacement for a five year old "best buy" scanner which although top notch for its time, was beginning to look rather puny in comparison to the new kids on the block. I paid £84 in a sale although the RRP was £94.

It's a fairly handsome looking beast and the silver and grey colour scheme which now seems to be the mode blends well with my existing PC equipment.

Installing the software was very straightforward and with eager anticipation I set to reading the reference guide which came on the disc. I quickly found that the guide contained very little information of any use whatever. It is sloppily translated from whatever the language was in which it was first written.

It's very perfunctory and in common with much in the way of computer related literature, seems to have been written by someone with plenty of technical knowledge but no appreciation of how to impart this knowledge to the uninitiated consumer.

Having had bad experiences previously with maufacturers support lines and a poor opinion of interactive support sites, I didn't use these, preferring to bash on by myself. I had therefore to learn to use the scanner by trial and error. This too is not satisfactory and in my view the reference guide is something which needs to be looked at by Epson. Perhaps their own support is excellent, but I don't suppose I'll ever know. I've had to give it a rating in order that the review is accepted so it gets "Satisfactory." A decent set of instructions would mean Support would not be an issue for most users.

For example the instructions on removing the document mat, to allow film or slide scanning were such that: I now realise the first few times I did it, I could have damaged the rather flimsy mat. Feeding in negative strips to the admittedly intriguing Auto Film Loader was at first baffling and was often hit or miss. The loader often would churn away inexplicably while failing to load the film despite numerous attempts to do so.

On other occasions the negative strip was accepted but the feeder again churned away without stopping, even when the strip appeared to be loaded. At these times it would take a fit and lock itself into a noisy wrestling match with the film strip. The lack of instruction means that it is very unclear what you can do to clear the jam when the eject button fails to work and again this could lead to damage. It can be a bit of a nerve wracking experience, perhaps though for a non-dedicated film scanner perfection shouldn't be expected.

In operation I have to say I find it to be often very noisy, loud screeches and squawks accompanying each preview being taken and similarly at the beginning and end of the scan. Annoyingly as there is no on/off switch, this also happens every time the PC is turned on.

Used as a document or print scanner the area being scanned doesn't reach to the edges of the scanner bed, so a piece is trimmed from the edge of your picture. To get a complete picture, the snap has to be aligned along some object such as a ruler, placed along the edge of the bed so as to get the whole object in scan while avoiding misalignment.

Something which still bothers me is as mentioned above, that there is no power button on the machine. It seems as though power is permanently being supplied to it as there is always a light glowing on the "start" button. This may not be the case but how am I to know? It still leaves me with a feeling of unease.

After all this it could be assumed that I'm not impressed with the Perfection 2580 Photo. Odd to say this is not the case.

The reason for this is that the quality of the scans is very, very good and they are produced very rapidly. The pictures are crisp and clear and the colours very acceptable. A 7X4 inch print for example scans at 300 dpi in 8 seconds, 13 seconds at 400dpi and 65 seconds at 800 dpi.

Resolution goes all the way up to 12,800 dpi. A full size 6 X 4 would take some time at this sort of figure but I can't imagine any circumstance where you'd want to do this. A tiny 10mm square surviving scrap of an 80 year old picture scanned at this resolution in 30 seconds and filled a 19 inch screen at only 17% of its full size. A scanned 35mm negative similarly clear and detailed brought marvellously to life scenes of a childhood from 40 years ago.

In conclusion, I'm more than happy with the final results. The core functions are firmly in place and the Perfection 2580 could have been a very pleasing purchase. It's just let down rather disappointingly by the lack of attention which seems to have been applied to the detail.
 

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