Epson Perfection V600 Scanner not working: I have not used my Epson Perfection V600 Scanner for several months, and today all of the scans are out of focus. I know that 35mm the film...

PatrickAtty Loc: The Woodlands, TX

I have not used my Epson Perfection V600 Scanner for several months, and today all of the scans are out of focus. I know that 35mm the film has sharp photos, so it has to be the scanner. I hope that someone did not lay something heavy on the scanner top. Anyone have any remedies up his or her sleeve? Thanks.

Bill_de Loc: US

This may be obvious, but did you remember to set it for transparency and take the shade out of the cover?

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lamiaceae Loc: San Luis Obispo County, CA

Bill_de wrote:

This may be obvious, but did you remember to set it for transparency and take the shade out of the cover?

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Yes, that will cause some problems.

MT Shooter Loc: Montana

Bill_de wrote:

This may be obvious, but did you remember to set it for transparency and take the shade out of the cover?

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The V600 will not operate with the white background in place if you select film scanning.

MT Shooter Loc: Montana

PatrickAtty wrote:

I have not used my Epson Perfection V600 Scanner for several months, and today all of the scans are out of focus. I know that 35mm the film has sharp photos, so it has to be the scanner. I hope that someone did not lay something heavy on the scanner top. Anyone have any remedies up his or her sleeve? Thanks.

Has it been dropped at some point? A drop can dislodge the scan head and it will be out of focus. Its a very precision instrument.
Something heavy on the lid will not cause problems as that only contains the back light mechanism. Its not part of the focus system.

lamiaceae Loc: San Luis Obispo County, CA

PatrickAtty wrote:

I have not used my Epson Perfection V600 Scanner for several months, and today all of the scans are out of focus. I know that 35mm the film has sharp photos, so it has to be the scanner. I hope that someone did not lay something heavy on the scanner top. Anyone have any remedies up his or her sleeve? Thanks.

I have a V500 seems to work fine. I think the unit is pre-focused on the top surface of the glass so it should not scan out of focus if the film is in the correct position. Are the Sprocket Holes, Frame Numbers, Film ID, and edges OOF too? Those should never be soft. Also I've played around with scanning some small objects and at least for the V500 (a cheap model) the lens give several mm of DOF and can scan something with third dimensionality, so I'd don't see how your focus could change. Are you putting your film in the carrier correctly (assuming it has one). Mine (V500) has two plastic carriers, one for film strips and one for mounted slides. I also made my own cardboard carrier for a 6x7cm film frame.

TriX Loc: Raleigh, NC

And is the film inserted in the carrier correctly? Shiny side down - film code and number appear reversed when viewing from the top.

A.J.R. Loc: Devon, UK

TriX wrote:

And is the film inserted in the carrier correctly? Shiny side down - film code and number appear reversed when viewing from the top.

I have never found that this makes much difference to the sharpness of the resulting image.

jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY

Maybe -

https://files.support.epson.com/htmldocs/prv1ph/prv1phug/probs_4.htm
https://files.support.epson.com/htmldocs/cx11nf/cx11nfug/trbes_3.htm

PatrickAtty Loc: The Woodlands, TX

jerryc41 wrote:

Maybe -

https://files.support.epson.com/htmldocs/prv1ph/prv1phug/probs_4.htm
https://files.support.epson.com/htmldocs/cx11nf/cx11nfug/trbes_3.htm

Thanks to all. After looking carefully at all settings, I found that the image to be saved was set to be the same size as the original. In other words, the image was saving to be a tiny photo (I was scanning 35mm negatives). I don't know how this setting changed, and the Epson software is still defaulting to the tiny photo. Right now, I have to reset the image size for each image scanned, but at least it produces files large enough and with sufficient detail to be useable.

The Epson scanner software is still unstable, a post-Win10 development. I gone to the Epson website and downloaded an update, but the problem persists. Oh well, again, I can work around the problem.

Thanks again.

burkphoto Loc: High Point, NC

PatrickAtty wrote:

Thanks to all. After looking carefully at all set... (show quote)

Do you know where the *Settings* section is at the top of the scanner driver interface? That's where you can set everything the way you like it, click Save, and you will always have a menu selection for that method of scanning. I must have a dozen...

lamiaceae Loc: San Luis Obispo County, CA

PatrickAtty wrote:

Thanks to all. After looking carefully at all set... (show quote)

Don't blame Windows 10, my Epson V500 scanner is older and works perfectly with Windows 10.

lamiaceae Loc: San Luis Obispo County, CA

burkphoto wrote:

Do you know where the *Settings* section is at the top of the scanner driver interface? That's where you can set everything the way you like it, click Save, and you will always have a menu selection for that method of scanning. I must have a dozen...

Good point!

MDI Mainer

I too have an older V 600 that works flawlessly with Windows 10 on my new Dell laptop. When I was setting up the computer I downloaded the latest software from the Epson web site.

lamiaceae Loc: San Luis Obispo County, CA

MDI Mainer wrote:

I too have an older V 600 that works flawlessly with Windows 10 on my new Dell laptop. When I was setting up the computer I downloaded the latest software from the Epson web site.