A while back Jeff asked about the feasibility of using the Epson 4990 for batch scanning 35mm negatives / slides. Last night I had to do something like that for a client. I had about 40 color negatives that needed to be scanned for output at say 300 dpi 8 x 10.
A couple of quick impressions: the 35mm holder is a pain to load. I was doing color negative film. It goes emulsion up into the carrier and boy it wanted to curl up and I had a lot of trouble getting it to lie flat. As you know you can put four strips (6 negs each) into the holder. Yes, there is a little notch to slide the film under at one end, but not at the other. I got the stuff in okay, but it is just not the same as using a good sturdy negative holder for a film scanner.
I was using VueScan. Next problem was that in the preview, I really couldn't get all four strips lined up properly so that I could scan all four strips at once. This might have been easier to deal with if I was using the Epson Twain interface. Don't know. But I lined things up so I could do one strip at a time.
Size @ 4800 dpi input scan is 15 x 23 inches. But in my opinion, you'd be crazy to use this to scan 35mm negs. at that resolution unless your film scanner was broken. Remember, you are adding two surfaces that can and will contain dust, hair, and other unwanted junk. Remember that the negative is just not lying as flat as it would with a dedicated film scanner. In other words - my quick pronouncement is that for 35mm negatives, I'd still use it if I had to do a large scanning job where the quality of individual scans could be mostly for the web or for knowing what you had (indexing). But for the real thing - where you want to get everything you can out of the negative / slide - I'd still jump to a film scanner.
The same, obviously is not true for the Medium Format and large format negatives where I'm dealing with one negative at a time and you can put the negative on the sweet spot of the scanning glass, and you are prepared to clean each neg. up as needed.
