mikedaddy.com

Epson Perfection 2400 Photo

Reviewed by Michael Palmer

Introduction

The Epson Perfection 2400 scanner is a USB 2.0 film/slide/print scanner for

the “Pro-sumer Market”.

I would only say the Perfection 2400 is a “Pro-sumer” scanner because it has

the ability to scan slides and negatives. Most casual users would only want

to scan prints.

I needed a new scanner that would still do prints, but also do negatives

and slides on a budget, while also supporting both Linux and Windows.

Basic Features

The Perfection 2400 comes standard with a good feature set.

• 2400 x 4800 DPI
• “Hi-Speed Scanning”
• Included Film Strip adapter
• Up to 6 negatives or 4 slides
• Four Scanning Buttons
• USB 2.0 Interface

Out of the box

Pulling the scanner out of the box, the first thing I noticed was the good

packing job, they used a ton of tape to protect the scanner from shipping problems.

Everything was real quick and simple. First, flip the ‘storage’ switch on the back to

unlock, then plug the light-lid into the scanner body,

next plug the power into the wall and into the body, last plug in the USB cable.

Software Setup

Windows:

Windows setup consisted of :

1. Put in CD

2. Follow directions by hitting next a bunch

3. Software loads and works

Image via Wikipedia

This was a super-simple setup, less hassle than WinAmp.

Linux:

Running Gentoo at home, things are super easy to install. To install this scanner, I did

need to recompile my kernel, currently 2.4.22. I needed to include “USB Scanner Support”,

in addition to the usual USB drivers necessary.

SANE: Next I just ran an ‘emerge xsane’ which takes care of all

the dependences. If I was running Slackware,

I would have downloaded both the sane and xsane packages from linuxpackages.net, or grabbed the source

and compiles according to the instructions in the README or INSTALL file.

Sane Setup was as easy as editing my /etc/sane.d/epson.conf file and switching the port to “/dev/usb/scanner0″.

I’m not going to cover any more setup help, because I thought it was

super easy, If you are having problems, check some forums or something.

Samples

Right now, I’ve only got this: Sign Pic.

I will post more samples soon.

Other Notes

Epson meant for this scanner to only scan 35mm slides and negatives, however in Linux,

the software does not look for the transparency adapter when you are scanning using the

light-lid. I was able to get decent scans from 6×4.5cm negatives, but anything larger will

not fit. In windows, without the transparency adapter, the scanner sits for a while and then

will bring up an error.

Conclusion

The Epson Perfection 2400 is a great scanner for the money.

Advantages:

• Easy to use
• Works excellent in both windows and Linux
• Scans Slides and negatives as well as prints
• Super Quick preview
• Fairly Quiet while scanning
• Excellent Quality for the money

Disadvantages:

• Doesn’t handle medium format. If I want to scan medium format and have all the same functionality,

  I have to buy the Epson 3200 Photo, or locate an old (now discontinued) Perfection 2450.

• The blackout for the light lid is a little cheap/flimsy and not easy to put in when your hands are full

Looks like Ford is airing a commercial that shows a separated family. You can check it out here.
It may be a good move for Ford considering there are millions of seperated families these days. Or it may not matter. Who knows.

Tried a new sushi restaurant last night, Uni Sushi.
We actually tried some Sake, it wasn’t like I thought it would be. It was creamy and beer like, but about four times stronger. I liked it and will probably try it again.
Their Tiger roll was better than average, and we tried their “Millenium Roll” which was good also. We’ll probably go back again, but the price was about double that of Shogun‘s lunch pricing.

I recently got a Plantronics 510 bluetooth headset. Currently I’m using a Motorola 6100 cellphone which has no bluetooth capabilities. I went back to my old Sony Ericsson T610, which is about 4 years old now, has its share of problems, but does include bluetooth. Since I’m going to be using bluetooth now, I found an unlocked Motorola Razr V3i on ebay for a really good price, so I went ahead and bought it. Now I just have to wait for it to come in to play with it.

I’m excited because it has a decent camera. Maybe I can integrate something so I can post pictures more often since I’ll have an okay camera with me at all times.

Well, I upgraded Movable Type and apparently it did not upgrade the mt_session table. So after much stressing over it, I’m finally able to blog again.. Yay!

It really messed up all my templates and stuff, so I hijacked a pre-defined layout.

Allstate sent me a hand written birthday card. How sweet. I do love Allstate. When my apartment burned down, Allstate was there.

– End Allstate plug

Houston and Vienna for YAPCs Next Year (The Perl Foundation)

This is great! Now I don’t have to go out of town to attend the perl conference. Last year it was in Toronto, work was short on money to send me there, next year I’ll be able to just drive to it.

I was watching Doctor Who on DVD this morning, there was an episode with a bunch of voodoo people in it, they reference bunghole. I thought Beavis and Butthead invented that word.. haha.