Epson Perfection 4990 Photo Scanner

PURCHASE YOUR EPSON PRODUCT THROUGH AN AUTHORIZED DEALER OR FROM EPSON DIRECTLY.

This is not a review of this product, but rather a word to the wise... Two and half months after my purchase of an Epson 10000XL scanner through Amazon, it stopped working. Through the followup and tech support process I learned that, because I purchased through Amazon, the manufacturer nor the seller would honor the 1 year warranty. Epson's position is that Amazon is not an authorized seller and that they merely act as broker for what can often be re-furbished or second hand merchandise.

So, should your purchase break or malfunction, as mine did, you are out of luck with regard to warranty.

This lesson cost me $2400.00

I bought this scanner based on the number of positive reviews that it had received. It is a good photo scanner, but I'm not so sure a great photo scanner. Perhaps it's just Epson's default settings, but I'm not a professional so I place a lot of faith on it being right 'out of the box'.
I have a less expensive HP 5370C that does a much better job on transparency scans (slides, negatives, etc.) I also do a lot of line art scans involving pastels. The 4990 Photo is inconsistent to say the least. Some pastels it can interpret fine, some it just washes out and with others, it doesn't even come close to what the actual color is.
It does some things pretty good, but at this price point I was expecting more.

This is my fourth scanner, and with it, I can do practically everything. with very hard work, I scanned my 14000 slides with an older scanner - with this one I could have done it more that twice as fast. It even scans the very small negatives of my wife's old Minolta quite well, not to mention the 500 4X6 negatives I scanned. Normal scanning is a snap. I can recommend this scanner to anybody who is willing to spend a bit extra for versatility and quality.

After two weeks of trying to implement e-mail instructions from Epson, this scanner still refused to work. I returned it to seller and was informed it was phased out by Epson. Good! Now no one else will suffer the frustrations of trying to get this scanner to operate.

This might be more than you were planning to spend on a scanner, but you won't be sorry. Seems well made and produces outstanding scans. I have been using it for photos and some quite old 35mm slides and have been very pleased with the quality, speed and ease of use.