UMAX Astra 3450

The Umax Astra 3450 is a mid-range consumer flatbed scanner. Launched this year (2001) it is one of a range of products that includes both consumer and professional standard equipment. I have owned and used flatbed scanners for about 6 years. I only decided to replace my previous model because it had a SCSI interface and I don’t have a SCSI card in my new PC.

Having used a scanner for some time I had a pretty clear idea of what features ...
...I decided to buy a Umax Astra 3450. The basic specification met my requirements and it was available at the right price for my budget.

Specification
~~~~~~~~~~~~~

USB Interface
600 x 1200 dpi optical resolution
A4 flatbed with 100 x 127mm transparency adapter in the lid
42 bit colour depth/14 bit monochrome (assuming your software supports it, otherwise 24/8 bit)

Size: 460 x ... more

The Umax Astra 3450 is a mid-range consumer flatbed scanner. Launched this year (2001) it is one of a range of products that includes both consumer and professional standard equipment. I have owned and used flatbed scanners for about 6 years. I only decided to replace my previous model because it had a SCSI interface and I don’t have a SCSI card in my new PC.

Having used a scanner for some time I had a pretty clear idea of what features I wanted, in this case I decided to go for a USB interface (might as well use those empty ports on the PC) and 600 dpi optical resolution. I wasn’t too concerned about higher resolutions as experience had shown that past 150dpi there was little difference when it came to the final printed result. One additional feature I was interested in was a transparency adapter. This allows for the scanning of transparencies or negatives. While I didn’t really expect to print from 35mm at the resolution I was looking at, I had a lot of old negatives that I wanted to catalogue and preview to decide if any were worth getting printed.

Having looked at many specification sheets and read even more reviews I decided to buy a Umax Astra 3450. The basic specification met my requirements and it was available at the right price for my budget.

Specification
~~~~~~~~~~~~~

USB Interface
600 x 1200 dpi optical resolution
A4 flatbed with 100 x 127mm transparency adapter in the lid
42 bit colour depth/14 bit monochrome (assuming your software supports it, otherwise 24/8 bit)

Size: 460 x 295 x 87.8 (according to the spec. sheet – this means it is one of the medium size machines rather than the very small breed)

Scan/Copy/Custom buttons allow simple operation directly from the scanner (I’ve not actually tried this yet, I’ll report later)

Software
~~~~~~~~

TWAIN interface supported by VistaScan driver

Caere Omnipage LE OCR software
Adobe PhotoDeluxe Home Edition
Presto PageManager

Installation
~~~~~~~~~~~~

Installation was straightforward, as one would expect with a USB device and Windows Me. All the supplied software was installed with no problems (initially). The scanner is supplied with a USB lead, which is good but they are a bit mean with the cable length, 1m is a bit short unless you have the scanner sat virtually on top of the computer.

On first testing all the software appeared to run as expected. Subsequently Presto PageManager refused to start up. There was no obvious reason why it should have worked then stopped, but it did. I found that there was a patch available from the publisher’s website for this problem. It only occurs with Windows Me and it now all seems OK again.

Performance
~~~~~~~~~~~

I don’t intend to review all the applications here, enough to say that they all performed as advertised but remember that ‘LE’ or ‘Home Editions’ are supplied by the publishers more as tempters for the full products than as workable solutions.

The scanner doesn’t have a power switch – according to the manufacturers this is to reduce warm up times. The quoted life for the lamp is 10,000 hours (if you were to leave it on constantly that’s about 14 months). There is a timer however so it doesn’t actually stay on all the time.
Scans are fairly quick; they appear to take about as long as my old scanner did on a SCSI interface. This is a combination of the improved scanner speed and faster PC offset against the slower interface. Although USB is a pretty good general purpose interface SCSI is faster. For the best performance nowadays you need to look at FireWire systems. The higher the resolution, the slower the scan (as you should expect). Remember that if you double the resolution you quadruple the file size.

For photographs the scans are of well focused with good contrast and dynamic range. The colour match appears to be as good as can be expected on an uncalibrated system (that is to say that the scanner, monitor and printer are not calibrated to each other). Using default settings photographs are reproduced accurately enough to satisfy most casual users.

As I said earlier this scanner has an in-built transparency adapter, this is basically a light box in the lid which shines through the material to be scanned. In the driver there are settings for transparencies (that’s slides to you and me) or negatives. These are only generic settings so there aren’t specific profiles for different film types as you would find in more expensive systems.

35mm slides produce adequate results. Bearing in mind an optical resolution of 600dpi, you will only be getting about 800 x 600 pixels, enough for on-screen viewing or a fair quality 6x4 inch print but don’t expect to print massive enlargements.

35mm negatives are more problematic. They obviously have the same size limitations as slides but there are also complications in relation to colour. As you will notice, if you have ever looked at a colour negative, there is an overall orange colour to the material. This is to do with the nature of the process for photographic printing. What it means when scanning is that the software should allow for the orange cast before reversing. Incidentally, all different film types have slightly different shades of orange – that’s why professional scanning software has profiles for different films. The VistaScan software doesn’t appear to handle this correctly which means that negative scan come out as very light and very blue (that’s the inverse of the orange cast). Adjusting manually in the driver still results in rather dull and low contrast images. While you can do further adjustment later in your graphics software Umax really should sort this out. I have contacted them on this point and their response is to scan as positive then adjust in graphics software - this is a bit of a cop out.

It is possible to get usable scans from 35mm negatives, but it takes far more effort than it should. Fortunately my intention is mainly to sort through piles of old family photos where the originals are long gone, but the negatives remain in order to identify those worth reprinting. I don’t really need high quality scans (and at the resolutions available I’m not going to get them) but I would appreciate an easier process. I have achieved some good 6 x 4 prints and even an 8x10 at adequate quality (using 1200dpi, interpolated in one axis from 600).

The VistaScan driver can be used in two modes, Beginner or Advanced. Beginner simply offers a number of preset tasks (‘scan a photo’) and sets appropriate default resolutions etc. Advanced mode allows fuller control of parameters.

Conclusion
~~~~~~~~~~

The Umax Astra 3450 is generally good quality and reasonably priced. The main problem area is in scanning negatives where the driver doesn’t really cope very well. This is a software limitation so, hopefully, will be resolved by Umax. If you want a general purpose flatbed scanner with the added bonus of a transparency adapter them this may be suitable. Remember that the optical resolution is on the limit of usability for 35mm negatives or transparencies, so don’t be too ambitious.

You can check out the details at:

www.umax.co.uk

 

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