Restoring old photos. 16x in Vuescan. Epson 4870 overkill?

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Vagabond

I have taken on a project scanning and restoring hundreds of old black
and white prints, the earliest from the 1890-ies. I am looking for a
new flatbed scanner to do this but I wonder if Epson 4870 is overkill?
What should I get?

My system is: iMac 700 with 512 RAM, Vuescan 8.0.11. Epson 2100
printer (called 2200 in the US) Minolta Multi Pro film scanner. Epson
1260 flatbed scanner.

Because I have the Minolta film scanner that capability of a flatbed
is not needed. Some questions and thoughts:

1. Is the Digital ICE any good for old dusty oily prints with streaks
and fingerprints? Is it worth the extra time and money to get ICE for
flatbed? I use ICE for colour film with the Minolta but only in the
"light" setting – anything more will reduce sharpness too much.

2. Using Vuescan with 16x multisampling makes a big difference in
quality. But the Epson 1260 I have now is too slow to use 16x on any
print bigger than wallet size. My new scanner should be able to use
16x multisampling for pictures as large as A5 without taking all day
at 1200 minimum.

3. I find that scanning at 600 isn't enough to capture all detail. At
600 I can see that pixels limits the resolution rather than the
contents on the old pictures, which often holds amazing detail, esp.
if they are contact prints. I have been using the Epson 1260 at 1200
(which is max for this model). But anything more than 2400 will create
too large files for my computer to handle in Photoshop. My ideal file
size is around 50MB in 16bit grey scale. But I can go up to 150MB if
needed although Photoshop operations like "healing brush" get
painfully slow then. I don't normally scan in RGB because of the file
size increase.

4. My first thought was to get the 4870. But I don't know if it is
worth it as I won't scan film on it and I won't scan at 3200 or 4800.
If ICE is good for printed old photographs it might be worth it just
for that, but I read mixed opinions about ICE on the 4870. What do you
think?

5. Regarding resolution an Epson 1270, which does 2400, should be
enough for my purpose. But is it fast enough for 16x multisampling? I
need speed. And for some reason 1270 doesn't appear in Vuescan's list
of supported scanners. Anyway, are there differences in optical
quality that makes the output less good than the more expensive
models?

Looking forward to your advice.

Vagabond
 
From what i have read here about the Epson scanners from authors i
trust , there is not a lot of difference in resolving capability, which
is what it sounds like what you are really after, between the Epson 2400
and the 4800 series. For sure there are other improvements, though. i
would spend my money on memory for the iMac and purchase one of the
Epsons, 2400 or higher or look for a scanner with equivalent resolving
power. However, i suspect that any of the Epsons from the 2400 on will
be an improvement over your 1260. If one of the epsons supports multi
sampling at each scan position in one pass ( a la Nikon), i would pursue
that one over multipass multi sampling because of sampling registration
issues.

Frank
 
I can't say I've noticed any discernable difference between 600 and 1000 dpi
scanning of old photos. Dynamic range and utilising curve tools etc. seem
to have a greater benefit. The smaller the photo, such as a cart or
contact print I've scanned at 1200, but still the quality is negligible.
Remember, people get hung up on the screen image and touching up of every
blemish they can see, which when printed isn't visible to the naked eye.

Worse... is the habit people have of blurring the image to hide dust &
scratches. Looking at a portrait with blurry eyes or detail is very
annoying, not to mention destructive to the overall photo composition.

I have recently finished restoring a batch of 150 old photos, and the one
thing I have learnt, is less is more with regard to touching up. Too many
people go for the over kill method. Computer photo restoration does not
produce the same result as early expert artists, who could take a complete
fuzzy mess and turn it into a photo realistic portrait of superb quality.

As for greasy finger prints, old photos can be gently cleaned (why scan
dirt that's masking detail). Scanning in colour mode (RGB) produces far
greater detail than grey scale. The subtle grey scale range in old
photographs is too important to lose.

J
 
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