Saving Precious Photo Negatives

I’ve been using digital photography for years so I haven’t had the thought of photo negatives cross my mind for awhile. I’ve always been a photography nut and love to take pictures, so my collection of photo negatives (before owning a digital camera) stacks up to my eyeballs.

In the past, a photo negative scanner was expensive, but the Epson Perfection 3590 Photo provides an affordable way to save all your favorite photo negatives before they disintegrate. The scanner can be used to scan regular pictures and your other documents, but it’s an easy way to save your 35mm negatives. It comes with an easy-to-use automatic film feeder and the scan quality for film is good at 3200 x 6400 dpi (for enlargements of up to 8” x 10” or larger).

As with other Epson scanners, the 3590 emphasizes ease of use. All you need to do to scan a strip of film is insert it into the autoloader slot and sit back and wait for it to scan. Unfortunately you can only load in one strip at a time, so if you have a whole box to scan, it will definitely take awhile. It hooks into your computer via USB 2.0, and has buttons on the front that allow you to scan directly to PDF, an e-mail program or your default printer.

There are three scan modes: fully automatic, professional and a third mode that falls in between the two. The full auto mode does not give you many options with fewer options to customize your scans. The professional mode gives you the opportunity to set grain reduction when scanning transparencies. If you’re unhappy with the results of automated edits, the settings are easy to modify in the configuration menu.

The included software includes a photo editor, a business card program and more importantly, color restore and dust removal features for the negative scans. The business card program is not the best, as it’s known to have a few errors for every business card it scans in. As a whole though, this is an excellent simple to use, “entry-level” scanner with good color and clarity. The discriminating photo professional may not be totally satisfied with the color quality in the default modes, but it’s good enough for me.

The Epson Perfection 3590 Photo works with both Windows and Mac and is available for about $150 on www.epson.com or at your nearest CompUSA.